Honesty is the best policy for all the Web
Published: 02 Aug 2005 13:40 BST
The fact that IE7 will fail the Acid2 Web test page is nothing notable. The fact that Microsoft is saying so is much more significant. The company's whole attitude to Web standards has taken a refreshing turn with the development of the new browser version, and we welcome it wholeheartedly. Compliance with standards is now taken seriously within the IE team, an unexpected level of openness from a company that's been criticised so many times for ignoring the rest of the world.
The long gap between releases of IE has significantly held back the pace of Web development. Web developers and users alike have struggled with a majority browser that didn't allow them to get the most out of the web. Why develop a site using advanced features if the majority of people who visit it aren't able to see them? And why not use IE6's proprietary features if the only people inconvenienced are geeks with weird software?
Passing Acid2 completely isn't the single most important design consideration for browser makers; it's good, but, as its creators admit, it's not a Web standards compliance test and doesn't cover everything. None of IE's rivals pass the test entirely, so expecting Microsoft to work solely on that is unfair. It's the taking part that matters, not the passing.
Microsoft can still do more. It needs to ensure that the whole of the HTML 4.01 standard — now over five years old — is implemented. It needs to abandon its own versions of JavaScript so that developers aren't tempted to use them in new web applications. It needs to make sure transparent PNG images display correctly. The good news it that it looks like these things will happen.
Making sure software complies with standards is a perennial problem. It will never happen that all software can be 100 percent compliant with every relevant standard. However, when a dominant product is allowed to fall so far behind the state of the art, it prevents a whole section of the industry from achieving its potential. Microsoft's new approach to standards and open communication is overdue, but very welcome. If Microsoft intends to continue as it has started, IE7's release will make the web a much richer place.
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