Slightly ajar

The standards wars will continue for ever. once one arguement is settled, another will take it's place.

I echo your concerns, David. From what I can see this primarily benefits Microsoft and lazy/uncaring web developers.

I can only imagine the trouble alternate browsers will have trying to figure out what to do with the different possible values of that meta tag.

If I'm reading it right, it implies that all browser releases would have to include all prior rendering engines so that legacy websites would work in perpetuity.

Indeed, this solution(I would like to call it another problem) sucks, as it only helps IE(and I'm pretty sure it would bite back someday) while other browsers get to do more work(more browser sniffing).

This is retardulous. I'm tired of IE (Microsoft) getting special treatment.

Hmm, how can we get this little nasty post on digg? Mind writing a longer response on on this article David?

Having read the majority of comments here 'n there about this topic, I believe the hand of the logo should held just a hammer and a sickle...

The win or the defeat of the open standards isnt sth to blame M$ for. Actually, is the case to blame anyone else except Microsoft. Obviously standards underperform in achieving their purpose.

Let's take sth for given. Microsoft is a bad, bad, bad company. She wants to rule the net galaxy of ours, makes our playground hers property, and of course in order to succeed, the annihilation of Open Standards is her top priority. The f_ing million dollar question is: What the underdogs of the market do to prevent this?

Do they strictly follow the standards?
-No, for ex Firefox, has its own implementations in many topics, both significant and insignificant ones. Last serious thing I can recall is xmlhttprequest. The HTMLation of XHMTL is another example.

Do Open Standards themselves evolve as fast as they should?
-No examples needed!

The survival of standards is underdogs' responisbility because a failure of the first ones is at the expense of the last ones. And unfortunately, in real life there aren't any givens:there is no definition of who's really the good guy and who's the bad one. There are only losers and winners.

Also before blaming MS as the only evil of this world it's good to remember(and I am sure you do) that Netscape Navigator now FF, numero uno browser of the past acted exactly the same: buying antagonists and creating its own <layer>"standards".</lyaer>

the fact that Microsoft is unable to follow standards and instead tries to add a new de-facto standard so they can continue doing their proprietary crap should be brought to the attention of the european committee that is currently investigating opera's complaint.

The fact that M$ warns administrators that the business PCs they administer will automatically install IE7 if they don't take care (http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3Ben-us%3B946202&x=15&y=14 ) shows that just because IE6 was using so much proprietary stuff that it breaks even in IE7, businesses that coded to that proprietary stuff will now lose lots and lots of $$$ to update their business software.

And now they want to introduce the meta tag to be able to continue doing that sort of stuff....

Brian LePore writes:

As someone that uses conditional comments to make sure my sites render well in IE6-7, the meta tag thing really doesn't bother me that much. If it means IE will have a comparable rendering engine I'll begrudgingly accept it.

That being said, I have yet to hear what the expected behavior for IE8 will be once it sees a page marked for IE9. Will it render it as IE7 because it doesn't match the version, or will it see that the meta tag was requesting that browser, but it's a higher version so it'll render as IE8 and do its best?

@deadHarlequin: nice straw men and red herrings there. Instead of actually responding directly to the blog post you are using the tired old technique where you claim that someone is a communist to avoid dealing with their actual arguments.

So Microsoft has no fault in this what so ever? Their anti-competitive practices have not had any effect what so ever on open standards?

And you are blaming Firefox for Netscape's layers?

I've read the article and I've 2 small questions: 1) Does the meta tag replace the doctype? Or are they ment to be used together in a page?
2) If a site is marked for IE8 then what would firefox, opera,... do with the page? (It's marked for IE and not for firefox, opera) Try to render them anyway? (Knowing Microsoft put in some javascript/css/... - stuff not supported by any standard and not supported by any other browser)

This kind of stuff reminds me why I hate 'Microsoft'... If they don't have a monopoly, they'll do whatever it takes to get one...

GoJoeGo,

You re right, I m a bit off the topic, BUT, you can't obligate someone to build his app in a way -you- think is right. Calling something Open Standards, doesn't make it neither open nor standard. MS has the right to question this.

Now it's funny watching MS hitting on her own quirks, but "openers" shouldn't brag about the current state of the web either.

«You will see it's all a show keep'em laughing as you go just remember that the last laugh is on you!»

@deadHarlequin: you are completely right that just calling something an open standard doesn't make it one. What's funny about this is that Microsoft isn't even questioning what an open standard is. It has been established a long time ago. Things like HTML, CSS and JavaScript are open standards. Not even Microsoft denies this. So why do you?

"You can't obligate someone to..."

I can't, but the Government can

Yes, even in the US. Most industries have rules and regulations to follow. They can't do whatever they please.