David Storey - Divide and conquer

Divide and conquer

Saturday, 26. January 2008, 18:02:11

It feels to me as if we are at the start of another browser war. The calm before the storm is certainly over, following Opera's initial opening salvo. Microsoft's proposal is bad for the other browser vendors, bad for standards and bad for accessibility. I would consider it to be anti competitive. What is worrying for me is the whole fall out of this proposal, which has fractured the community.

There is a classic military technique called divide and conquer that has been used to great effect down the years by the British. With a number of leading web standards advocates under Microsoft NDA, and the WaSP in disarray (not to mention the whole CSS WG debate) , Microsoft (whether intentionally or not) seem to be using the same tactic to their benefit. It is imperative that WaSP and the web standards movement pull together as one, stop the in fighting, and have strong leadership. I for one would love to see Molly back involved. As the saying goes, United they stand, divided they fall.

Having thought about it more, it still feels like the meta element proposal is the web's equivalent of Microsoft driving the tanks into Poland. It must be stopped, but I'm not quite sure how yet. No one can stop MS implementing it if they do so wish. Maybe Opera's complaint wasn't so bad after all?

I'm still working through all the reasons in my head why this proposal is so bad for the web (and especially competing browser vendors), but one issue that immediately sprung to mind was that of accessibility. I fired off a e-mail to Bruce Lawson to confirm my feelings, and he agreed - Freezing the web to IE7 levels condemns much of it to inaccessibility. IE7 accessibility bugs wont be the only ones frozen of course. Bugs in each new version of IE will also be frozen for all eternity, even if there is a bad regression that sneaks through. Any new standard that may come up in the future to aid accessibility (that isn't just a browser chrome or interaction enhancement) will not be supported unless the meta element is included stating the version of the browser that supports it, or a higher version. If accessibility bugs (or security bugs that effect rendering or expected JavaScript/DOM behaviour) get fixed, then the old rendering engines will not be fully compatible, and thus break the reason why they proposed this behaviour in the first place.

While I understand Chris Wilson's position on Don't break the Web, and very much understand that this is an incredibly hard nut to crack (I work on similar issues every day), it feels like this proposal is more break the web for others. There must be a better solution.

When the dust settles, will MS have Silverlight waiting in the wings, on its golden horse? A List Apart are even advertising the solution: Create next generation Web applications with Silverlight™. Get free online training now. The Deck (the advertising network used) even states in emphases that We won’t take an ad unless we have paid for and/or used the product or service. If the web freezes development of standards by default, then perhaps Silverlight will become a much more viable alternative to the web for the many web developers that are not web standards experts and know to add the meta element or use the HTML5 doctype. Is this what MS (not necessarily Chris or the core of the IE team, who's commitment to standards I believe are genuine) secretly hope for?

The great opt-outInterview with Norwegian media

Comments

Steve Pifer # 26. January 2008, 18:58

David, has anyone tried presenting the accessability argument to Eric Meyer and the members of WASP supporting this idea? When the ALA article broke, most of the negative response blog entries and such were focused on breaking the Web, IE quirks compatability, and the deeply regretable loss of the forward progressive enhancement model. I just cannot see any of WASP publicly supporting an idea that locks out accessability improvements. That is provided of course that they care about accessability in the first place.

Anonymous # 26. January 2008, 20:19

Molly E. Holzschlag writes:

David,

Very good post, thank you. It is absolutely disheartening to see the divisions here, but I'm also going to work on giving myself a daily dose of "we'll get through this."

When I left WaSP I knew I was leaving a group of brilliant individuals with very independent ideas. The leadership of such a group was so time consuming and exhausting that the fun when out of it for me. I realized I'd rather keep my friends and colleagues than get bitter.

What you write is making me re-think that. I hate seeing what's happening because I do believe that such advocacy groups are needed now more than ever. You know as well as I do, however, how much sheer human energy it takes sometimes to get a movement, well, moving.

At this point, I think WaSP has shot itself in the foot. Can it even regain the foothold? I don't know, and as much as I am honored that you would acknowledge that I'd achieved at least something positive in the time I was there, I can't imagine ever going back.

I'm still committed to doing the Blue Sky Project that we worked on together in Paris, and putting my own funds into getting something going en masse from major companies and organizations as well as other advocacy groups. While that activity might not solve the problems we're facing today, some kind of grass roots, opt-in, non-w3c org with one agenda: An Open Web, is something that the Web could surely use right now.

Dustin Wilson # 26. January 2008, 22:04

Thank you, Molly, for quelling the insult volleys in Dean's post. Dean didn't deserve the flak he received at all. I've written my own scathing remark about this issue, but I didn't direct it toward the WaSP because well the finger pointing needs to go through the cruft right straight to the 800lb. gorilla, Microsoft.

I think you put it quite correctly, David, but something else supporters of this move really need to look at are the non-technical problems with this move. This would require Internet Explorer to keep renderers around from their previous versions like you say, but this means that with each new version there will be more BS for the program to go through just to render a page because of the baggage of the amount of renderers they would have to keep around. That would increase filesize and memory usage and decrease accessibility and speed. They've already created a similar rat's nest for themselves with Vista. It's a problem they're used to, but just like with Vista it's not a problem their users much care for.

I'm making an assumption here, but I wonder if this entire thing started when the IE team went to their superiors stating there was no way to keep up with the competition by repeatedly applying bandages to the Trident engine ulcer. I have no proof of this, but from what I read (and apparently you know first hand) the IE team really is dedicated to standards. Are they being forced to do this BS by others at Microsoft?

porneL # 27. January 2008, 02:51

IMHO it should be "egde" by default and regress to IE7 bugs whenever it sees "* html", [if IE] comment or any of such popular hacks.

I don't mind the tag so much, as long as the default will be always the best mode. Otherwise we'll be seeing new sites written for IE7 long after IE7 is gone (just like IE5's quirksmode is immortal).

What Microsoft is doing is Fire and Motion — with each new IE version they will be able to freeze one more bug-engine their competitors will have to reverse-engineer and implement, while MS can work on a next one.

On the bright side — the easiest way to trigger IE8 mode will be marking document as HTML5, so if enough people recommend „ignore Microsoft, just use HTML5”, IE8 will accelerate HTML5 adoption a bit.

Anonymous # 27. January 2008, 06:12

Brian LePore writes:

Thank you porneL (which is weird for me to type, considering how close it is to my last name) for bringing up the HTML5 aspect of things. I feel that the Web Standards community has been so blinded by the fact that Microsoft proposed the meta tag that they do not even recognize that IE8 using the better rendering engine when presented with the HTML5 DOCTYPE is quite honestly probably the best shot in the adoption of HTML5 by Web Developers. On top of that, it effectively keeps the status quo -- using the DOCTYPE as a switch for the rendering mode of the browser, be it Quirks Mode, Almost Standards Mode, Standards Mode, or now Super Standards Mode.

Now this raises the question, will IE8 even support any bits of HTML5? Has this been stated anywhere? If nothing else, it would be nice to get the new elements recognized by the browser correctly (though I honestly do not know if Opera/Firefox/Safari do this, if not the point is moot).

Dustin Wilson # 27. January 2008, 08:43

HTML 5 is already having a hard time because of Firefox. Perhaps they'll fix the problem, but by perusing the commentary there it appears it's a bigger problem than it appears and also a problem no one can really agree on at that. The bug is actually a series of bugs that domino into a big honking problem to say the least. The increased activity discussing the problem there seems to be promising, though.

Opera and Safari recognize unknown elements correctly at the moment and also accept CSS for unknown elements correctly as well. IE does neither correctly like Firefox, but JavaScript behaviors can force it to do right such as what Dean Edwards does with his fantastic IE7 package. Neither IE nor Firefox will speed up HTML 5 adoption with these methods.

Using HTML 5 would force standards mode I'm sure, but the proposed meta element can still be used in HTML 5 even when it is invalid HTML 5 code. Creating invalid documents haven't stopped people in the past. Granted, it's pointless to use that in HTML 5, but the very idea that it can isn't very comforting. They can just add support for HTML 5 (which is still up in the air) and authors can just put that invalid meta element in there and have that new HTML 5 document frozen for eternity as an IE 8 document or even IE 7 or IE 6 if they don't use the new elements.

Let's not forget the fact that the WaSP is even divided on HTML 5; before this announcement the HTML 5 Working Draft was the big argument of the week. HTML 5 is likely to change quite a bit from what it is now, so in reality it's not a solution to anything yet.

Anonymous # 27. January 2008, 19:40

minimal design writes:

I spent quite a bit of time myself trying to make Zeldman understand why IE7 as a default o that meta tag is equivalent to advertising IE7 rendering as the new Standard but for some reasons that perplex me he doesn't seem to be able to understand this simple fact. Maybe I shouldn't single him out, but he's (used to be?) by far one of the most popular/influential Standards advocate so I believe his position on the subject really hurts Web Standards and all the points he's trying to make on his blog (including comments) don't seem to be very well thought out... Some of his comparison don't even make sense.

On the Other hand, I found out on Meyer's blog that he actually spent a lot of time trying to convince the IE team that the default should be "edge" so... Except Zeldman and Gustafson who wrote the ALA article, who's actually for this proposal? I couldn't really find anyone else...

Like many others, if the default was reversed, I wouldn't be so against the proposal, but as it is now, to me it shows MS hypocrisy when they say they want to support standards...

I personally think that a better analogy for what MS is doing with their "don't break the Web" propaganda is: "don't fix the Web."

Let's see what happens...

Kelson Vibber # 28. January 2008, 18:06

IE7 as a default o that meta tag is equivalent to advertising IE7 rendering as the new Standard

So true. I've occasionally found myself arguing with people who claimed that IE's quirks mode was the de facto standard, so instead of other browsers conforming to some darn-fool-idealistic standard and complaining that IE doesn't match, they should all comply with IE's interpretation instead.

Anonymous # 30. January 2008, 16:47

Sander writes:

David, you wrote "I'm still working through all the reasons in my head why this proposal is so bad for the web (and especially competing browser vendors)".
How far along with doing that are you?

ppk is looking for some input from the other browser makers that they indeed see this meta tag proposal as a threat - http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2008/01/the_versioning_1.html#c10844 - and someone like you commenting on specifics might be very good.

richardyork # 30. January 2008, 18:01

If they say their solution is designed to prevent "breaking the web", then it is a failure. IE8 breaks the web for forward-compatible websites written to public standards.