On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 2:41 PM, Alex Henrie <alexhenri...@gmail.com> wrote: > CSS2 demanded incompatibility with IE6 and IE7's previous > implementations. IE8 resolved these problems and IE8 users haven't > taken to the streets of Redmond with pitchforks yet.
IE6 and 7 weren't even compatible with CSS1 in many ways. On the other hand, all other browsers overwhelmingly were. It would have been impossible to do anything that didn't either break IE, or break everyone else, *dramatically* (as in "everyone has to rewrite all their pages" dramatically). Since the behavior of everyone else was already specced, and IE's wasn't, and IE was the one that implemented the spec incorrectly to start with, the decision there was to stick with the already-specced stuff, and IE changed to accommodate it. I don't know why you think there wasn't massive backlash against Microsoft for their incompatible changes, either. IE7 adoption was very slow, and one reason I've often seen given is lack of compatibility with intranet sites. You might want to read this post by Chris Wilson: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Apr/0612.html One quote that stood out for me: "IE7 did cause widespread disruption, as a case in point. I championed making those widespread changes to improve our standards compliance. In all seriousness, I've managed to hang on to my job, but sometimes I think only just. I cannot go to my team and say 'hey, we're gonna break the web again (and again and again), but it's okay because it's for a good cause.' The world doesn't work that way. I wouldn't be responsibly doing my job - that one where half a billion web users rely on my team to not hose compatibility with their banking web site, even if their bank doesn't know how to properly use CSS 'float'." In other words, Microsoft realizes it messed up with IE7 and wants to avoid a repeat experience if at all possible. Notice what elaborate compatibility measures they've added to IE8, making it behave almost exactly like IE7 in many cases. > I'm asking the > same thing: take good behavior from Firefox, Safari, and Chrome and > get it working in IE and Opera too. It's not impossible, and it's well > worth it in the long term. That's a fine position, but in the end, if the implementors won't implement it, it's not going to go anywhere.