The main one that comes to mind is ActiveX controls.... a feature that many of us seriously can do without. It is a major component that makes IE quite dangerous and can only be added on as an extension by other browsers. Microsoft has done well over the past years trying to Dummy-proof it, but considering how few applications actually NEED the feature... the general public could probably do without it. Things like Windows Update are nice to have in your web browser... yes... but would you notice anything different if your OS came with an updater application written in VB that goes and grabs your updates from MS safely and securely? People wouldn't even miss it.

Sure, Active X is as useless as a third leg but I was thinking more towards standard compliance in general. A colleague recently showed me the source of a site he created, which had an elegant design coupled with some nice eye candy. The source was already fully W3C standards compliant and didn't look dramatic at all. What did look dramatic was the potion which he had to add just to make this sucker show up correctly on the IE6.

Yep, but that's because IE hasn't taken the standards as their top priority. Immediately they are worried about security and features. I understand their move but simultaneously they should've been working on compliance. They've been doing quite well with CSS support but they still have a long ways to go.

Did you even read my post? They had to fix 5 years worth of bugs and security issues first. And they had roughly a year to do it.

Did Firefox and Opera got perfect support for all w3c standards in 1 year flat after their release? Of course not. They incrementally added features till everything was supported. IE seems to move in that direction too.

No, actually, they used the standards as the basis for their engines.

Funny, it's as if the support just sort of happened!

Then explain why it took so long for Firefox to render the acid test correctly. Using your logic, it should've rendered perfect in the first version of firefox.

So we're supposed to get down on our knees, thanking Microsoft for providing the bare minimum? Bugs are effectively addressed with short release cycles, a robust mantainance team (which didn't exist throughout the IE6 era) and/or a more adequate development model (read: open source) ... not by investing most of the effort put into the next major version jump.

By the way, Firefox 2.0 does not pass the Acid2, a few early 3.0 builds do though. But arguing that every browser which does not pass this test is no better than the IE in terms of standards compliance is like accusing paintings by Caravaggio and Munch of not being completely lifelike.

I dunno, the fact that they STARTED developing IE after 5 years of hiatus, slowly pluggin up its bugs, leading to wider adoption of standards (the few of the ones they fixed), is kinda good. Remember that IE still has ~80% market share, so any new developement for it will have a global effect especially since they plan are distributing it via Windows Update.

I'm not saying that you should kiss Microsofts ass because they added tabs to IE in 1 year. Firefox zealots will not use IE even if it will have way better standards support (remember the first browser wars? IE outperformed Netscape in that field back then).

The fact that they let 5 years worth of bugs and security issues linger is a bit of a problem don't you think? It seems pretty clear that they weren't going to work on that project much more until someone started to creep in on their market share.

And did you even read my post?


And there is your question of...

Again, I reiterate.... yes I expect them to have this product released more standards compliant. The key factor is that they shouldn't have had security issues that are in the vicinity of 5 years old. That's just purely embarrassing. With their market share and revenue they should be able to come up with a better solution. You do realize that security fixes and standards compliance are in totally different realms, yes?

Let's be honest about this, they haven't been touching standards compliance heavily because the general public won't notice. The general public is going to notice things like "omigosh cool tabby things" and less phone calls to Dell tech support because IE helped them get the virus of death. Who does notice? The web design and development community who still have to have tons of work-around code, because otherwise users will look at their sites with confusion... despite them being compliant with standards.