Tim Bray writes about trying to get some CSS to work with IE. The issue revolves around using CSS to specify a font size that can be resized in IE. Turns out it ain't so easy. Bray (correctly) blames IE:
The problem isn’t that CSS is too hard. The problem isn’t browser incompatibilities in general. The problem is specifically that Microsoft Internet Explorer is a mouldering, out-of-date, amateurish, out-of-date pile of dung. Did I say it’s out-of-date? As in past its sell-by, seen better days, mutton dressed as lamb, superannuated, time-worn. It’s so, like, you know, so twentieth-century.
Don't hold back, Tim. Seriously, this is a problem. As others have noted, IE development seems to have stagnated. Meanwhile, browsers like Mozilla, Safari, and Opera leapfrog IE in areas like standards compliance and user interface (tabbed browsing, anyone?).
Bray seems to think the number of people using non-IE browsers will continue to increase. I think the number probably will increase, but not to a point where it makes a serious difference. Bray's numbers (36% of users on Mozilla) are skewed because of his highly nerdy audience (he's an XML guru, for goodness sake). Most sites probably still see 80-90% IE. Most users don't change defaults, much less browsers. (Granted, these are sweeping generalizations, but I think they're pretty close to the truth).
So, what's the problem? If 80-90% of the world is using IE/win, then developers are forced to work around its bugs. We're still (in some minor ways) paying for the sins of Netscape 4, six plus years after it came out. A stagnant IE makes it more difficult to reach a point where developers can write standards-compliant code and feel comfortable that it will render properly across browsers and platforms. We're in a better position than we were a few years ago, but there is a world of useful features that are held back by IE's lack of development.
Posted by Karl
May 28, 2003 09:23 PM