IE Struggles to Be Compatible

The conflict will expand next month, when Microsoft sends enterprises an Internet Explorer 7 Valentine. On February 12, IE 7 will dispatch through WSUS (Windows Server Update Services). The days of enterprises blocking the browser will end.

Desktops running Windows XP and IE 6 will get the update. Those running Windows Vista already have it. IE 7 is notorious for breaking applications and some Web sites, and the reasons for both calamities are somewhat different. Security architectural changes, mainly around ActiveX controls, are the compatibility killer for many homegrown applications and for some Web sites.

Microsoft's efforts to make Internet Explorer a standards-based browser has caused Web site compatibility problems.

The standards push opens up yet another area of IE conflict. The European Union has launched an antitrust investigation into browser bundling tactics and standards support, based on a complaint filed by Opera.

Well, it's good drama, anyway, with all three elements of conflict defined by literature: Browser against itself, browser against browser and browser against nature.

In a long blog posted overnight, Chris Wilson, Microsoft's IE platform architect, comes clean about efforts to achieve some kind of balance between standards compliance and backwards compatibility. It's an ugly story that he tells. But they say that confession is good for the soul—or perhaps software development.

Before his tale is told, it's best for a quick how-to about browser rendering. For IE 6, many Web site designers use a DOCTYPE, or Document Type Declaration, to open browser-specific pages or stylesheets. DOCTYPE was created with other rendering goals, but it has come to determine the browsers layout mode, mainly "quirks" or "standards."

IE 6 is perhaps the most widely used quirky browser, and there are millions of Web pages that use DOCTYPE to load compatible code. Modern browsers like Firefox and even IE 7 use multiple rendering modes. Quirks mode emulates the behavior necessary to run older code. Standards mode seeks to accurately render the HTML code or CSS (cascading stylesheets). Last time I checked—and it has been awhile—Firefox had an "almost standards" mode. DOCTYPE tags in Web pages can trigger different modes.

In IE 7, Microsoft sought to improve the browser's CSS handling but limited changes to standards mode. The result wasn't what Microsoft expected.

Wilson explains:

"Many of those changes made IE incompatible with content that was already part of the Web. It turned out by the time IE7 shipped in late 2006, roughly half of the top 200 U.S. Web sites were in 'standards mode.' Many of those sites had been 'opted in' to standards mode by a tool that generated their content; many of them had probably been hand-coded by someone who was trying to do the right thing, and make their HTML code valid according to the W3C. Regardless, users of those sites expected them to keep working the same, even when they downloaded a new version of IE. Unfortunately, that didn't happen."

From Wilson's perspective, Microsoft and Web designers share some blame for the compatibility problems. "Developers of many sites had worked around many of the shortcomings or outright errors in IE 6, and now expected IE 7 to work just like IE 6," he writes. "In many cases, these sites would have worked better if they had served IE7 the same content and stylesheets they were serving when visited with a non-IE browser, but they had 'fixed their content' for IE. Sites didn't work, and users experienced problems."

Wilson's explanation, while refreshing, is frightening. Right now, IE 7 is kind of a half-way compliant browser that too easily breaks the Web browser experience. The problem is Internet Explorer 8, for which Microsoft still struggles for the right balance between standards compliance and backwards compatibility. I loosely use the word "compliance," as there remains too much latitude with so-called standards and Web development. Microsoft can't be blamed for that.

To me, the scariest part of Wilson's story is what's not yet written: IE 8. Microsoft's solution : Put more onus on Web developers, which must insert a tag for rightly rendering the content in the most standards way. IE 8 will keep the same quirks and standards modes as IE 7.

Wilson contends the approach is the most sensible. He writes: "We can't break the Web experience on current sites for users like my mom, even for as good a reason as improving standards compliance. With all the great styling and layout changes we're working on in our new engine for IE 8 to be much more standards compliant, that's a lot of potential breakage."

What he's really say is this: IE 7 broke the Web once, and Microsoft doesn't want IE 8 to do the same. So for the mess of DOCTYPE rendering modes everywhere, IE 8 will hold to the IE 7 status quo. But to get the benefits of the new IE 8 rendering engine, Web developers will have to tag their sites to support the new browser. I wouldn't exactly call that a formula for mass adoption.

Given Microsoft's browser standards problems in Europe and the upcoming standards problems some enterprises will encounter come Feb. 12, Wilson strategically timed his blog post. The drama is far from over. Microsoft took advantage of IE's popularity, by letting—no encouraging—Web site development to cater to the dominant browser rather than to W3C standards. Microsoft and its customers suffered, because IE 6 limited how far designers could easily take the code and, later, when IE 7 broke the code.

I commend Microsoft for trying to fix the problem, but IE 7 half-arsed standards compliance looks to be yet a continuing problem with IE 8. There is little different from the past: Microsoft wants Web designers to cater to its browser, by tagging for IE 8. Somebody tell me: Conceptually, how is that any different from DOCTYPE and IE 6?

Related Posts:

• The New European Drama Unfolds, Microsoft Watch, Jan. 14, 2008
• Netscape: AOL Buries the Dead, Microsoft Watch, Jan. 2, 2008
• IE 8 and the New Browser War, Microsoft Watch, Dec. 20, 2007
• IE 8: What's In a Name?, Microsoft Watch, Dec. 5, 2007
• Who Jacked My Browser to Google?, Microsoft Watch, Nov. 29, 2007
• Why Did Microsoft Set IE 7 Free?, Microsoft Watch, Oct. 5, 2007
• Do We Really Need Another Web Browser?, Microsoft Watch, June 11, 2007
• IE 7 Gives the Green Light, Microsoft Watch, Feb. 6, 2007
• Will IE 7 Perception Problems Hurt Vista?, Microsoft Watch, Jan. 23, 2007
• Is Internet Explorer 7 Too Locked Down for You?, Microsoft Watch, Jan. 19, 2007
• Are IE 7 Installations Counting Up or Down?, Microsoft Watch, Jan. 16, 2007