On 13/05/2006, at 7:23 AM, Ian Cheong wrote:
Sorry not really. From the article above:
I think it's actually critically important that the reasons for
supporting standards in our products - particularly IE - be
business ones.
As in other thread (IHE/XDS) talking about telecoms standards,
businesses will only comply with voluntary standards if it makes
them money. The minute they think they can assist their own
business by not supporting standards, they will fudge them. eg SQL
non-standards in the marketplace.
The reason M$ has changed is only because it has hurt them in the
market - losing share to Firefox.
Whatever the reasons, it's a step in the right direction, and means
that for the first time there is light at the end of the tunnel for
web developers, who should be able in the not to distant future to
only need to code a web site once.
Browser "lack of standards" still makes some web sites fall over on
anything but M$ browsers. Government should regulate in the
interests of consumers.
Well developers that only test on IE should no longer exist. Even the
biggest companies - banks, MS themselves are now writing code that
works in IE and better browsers.
This is a win for the people - MS gave up on development of IE 5
years ago, and there has not been a single functional update since.
They assumed that they had achieved their original goal (the
destruction of Netscape as a company) and that standards would have
to bend to their ways of doing things. Open sourcing Netscape the
browser was the stroke of genius they couldn't predict (because they
just don't get it (yet)) and ironically it's this browser that has
now become the IE killer.
What I don't understand is their rekindled obsession with the browser
market. MS wouldn't lose a single sale if they removed IE from
Windows. They have never made a cent from IE in isolation but it has
cost them billions. If they were very clever they would either open
source IE or just remove it and bundle Firefox or another more
standards compliant browser with Windows.
Peter.
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