Dan and Angi have something to say

Welcome to our site! This is the Lovejoy family blog where we talk about all kinds of stuff. Mostly we talk about minutia and our beautiful son Elijah.

Saturday, March 19, 2005

Dan says:

Stick with the Fox

Some of you may be aware that Microsoft is coming out with a new version of Internet Explorer this summer or fall. (Or, knowing Microsoft, closer to January 2133)

The latest indication is that even this new browser will not fully support the CSS2 standard.

CSS is the language that web developers use to make a site look good. It is an elegant solution to a vexing problem - how to make your site look the same across different browsers.

Except, sites never look the same in Internet Explorer. Through a proprietary combination of deliberate obtuseness and incompetence, Microsoft forces every web developer to jump through hoops to make sure that his/her site looks good in IE. Firefox, Safari, and Opera, three browsers based on three different rendering engines, produce very similar results when they encounter valid CSS2 code. Once you get the code right, then you have to go in and hack toghether an inelegant kludge for Internet Explorer.

So Microsoft’s solution to this problem? Release an upgrade that doesn’t solve the problem. What do you suppose Microsoft has included in IE 7, if CSS2 support isn’t one of them?

Judging from past experience, let’s look at what we think the feature set for Internet Explorer 7 will be:

1. A quote bubble appears over the Favorites menu every few hours informing you that you have “unused Favorites” in your Favorites folder and asking if you’d like to “clean them up.” It’s just not annoying enough to figure out how to turn it off, because that would take an hour itself.
2. Clippy, in the form of a puppy, or a little cartoon “e,” appears at every new page. “It looks like you’re browsing. Would you like some tips on how to browse?”
3. Pop-unders still not blocked, but pop up and steal focus from other windows, usually windows where you’re typing in a credit card number
4. Processor intensive tasks like typing in web forms, reading web mail, and browsing LandsEnd.com will take 99% of processor cycles on your new Dual Athlon 64 2.4Ghz computer.
5. Taking a cue from Windows XP’s system tray, the Favorites Toolbar will contract and expand, seemingly at random, always hiding the web site address you’re looking for.
6. Better system integration will ensure that even if you’re on a secure site, Nigerian scammers will still be able to steal your bank account information.
7. Taking a lead from Apple, IE7 will use the zeroconf standard to ensure that every computer running IE7 is broadcasting its IP address and know weaknesses to script kiddies and spam zombies the world over.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. We should not be rewarding this kind of behavior. Get Firefox. You’ll like it. And so will I.