A Blog From Behind the Trenches

It doesn't look like Microsoft is learning from its past mistakes.

Microsoft's "Office Web Apps" will only support IE, Firefox and Safari. This means that they are leaving out support for Opera and Chrome. This is quite strange considering the antitrust troubles Microsoft has gotten itself into by breaking antitrust laws.

Microsoft is also aiming for using Silverlight, yet another proprietary technology controlled by them.

One would think that Microsoft would be eager to show that they are no longer going to abuse their dominant position in one market to affect a different market, but even with antitrust authorities breathing down their necks, their priorities seem to be a bit off.

These priorities seem to be based on the browser situation in the United States. Europe is quite different, however. While Opera's global market share seems to be around 3%, it could be approaching 10% in Europe, which is more than Safari and Chrome combined if one is to believe these statistics.

Perhaps if other browser vendors weren't forced to spend so much time on compatibility issues due to IE's dominance, standards support could be taken to a new level. But designing for browsers rather than standards still seems to be the norm. Even though Microsoft in particular should know better.

Do we need another Opera Bork Edition (and a Chrome Bork Edition while we are at it)?

I think I like this campaign much better than the one from Microsoft:

Windows Internet Explorer 8: Get the facts STRAIGHT

One of the most frequent questions I see about the Microsoft antitrust case in the EU is why Microsoft should have to include competing products in Windows. Is poor Microsoft being hunted by the evil EU with its silly laws that ensure competition in a free market?

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Wow, I have clearly missed a lot while on vacation for a couple of weeks! Not only did we lauch the beta of Opera 10 and Opera Mobile 9.7, but there are other developmens such as Opera reinventing the Web, and of course Microsoft is up to its regular tricks.

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The European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS), has joined Opera's antitrust complaint against Microsoft. ECIS members include IBM, Sun, Nokia, Adobe, Oracle, and others. Opera is also a member of ECIS

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About a year ago, I wrote about how Opera helped in forcing Microsoft to default to standards mode with IE8. Apparently, it is not that simple. Through Molly's blog, I found an article about how IE8 will require opt-in for many sites after all. I'm not sure what to make of this, but it does sound like bad news.

And yes, Molly Holzschlag has joined Opera! Most of you no doubt know about her and her work in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Web Standards Project (WaSP), and so on, so an introduction probably isn't needed. It's great to get more people on board who can spend time promoting and pushing for open standards.

Today, our core team revealed our entry into the JavaScript speed race with Carakan. We have no intentions to be left in the dust when it comes to performance. But what does Microsoft have to say about this?

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According to Microsoft, "E8 RC1 has the most complete implementation of the CSS 2.1 specification in the industry".

We have heard big promises from Microsoft in the past that they have not delivered upon, but recently they have found incentives to play nice and actually follow through on their promises.

If this really signals action rather than mere words, congratulations to Microsoft!

However, while these words from Microsofts are promising, there may be some problems as well. Daniel Glazman comments that some work still remains before Microsoft can claim the CSS 2.1 crown:

Full CSS 2.1 complete support is cool but it must be said that "full CSS 2.1 support" does not mean anything yet. CSS 2.1 is not yet a W3C Recommendation and it does not have an approved full Test Suite yet. Microsoft has submitted a rough 7,000 CSS 2.1 tests to the CSS WG but these tests need review before becoming official.

In the comments, James Hopkins points out some problems as well:

I'd argue that many of those 7,000 test cases are surfeit and unneccessary. For example, they have around 50 test cases specifically testing an absolutely positioned element that is offset to the left, and some are actually invalid.

If Microsoft's claims are based on invalid tests, one can hope that this is merely an error on their part. Normally one would not attribute to malice what could equally well be attributed to mistakes, but knowing Microsoft's history, we should keep scrutinizing their every move, and every claim. "Errors" have historically turned out to be conscious decisions on Microsoft's part to undermine open standards and competition in the market.

I notice that a lot of people people are wondering how they are going to be able to install a browser if IE is removed from Windows by default. This is a good question, but the answer is fairly straightforward.

If I am not mistaken, most Windows installations are not direct Windows purchases, but rather OEM versions preinstalled on new computers. In other words, the vast majority of Windows installations will come with the OEM's browser of choice, rather than Microsoft forcing all OEMs to stick with IE as they have been doing.

Then there's perhaps a smaller group which will install Windows manually. There are several possible solutions for this group, such as offering a way to download any browser through some kind of portal the first time you connect to the internet (most Linux distributions have package managers, so why not Windows?), supplying separate disks containing the browser(s), and so on.

For the vast majority of people, I don't see that this will become a problem since they will simply use the browser the OEM decided to bundle. And with antitrust regulators breathing down Microsoft's neck they won't be able to force OEMs to bundle IE anymore.

Microsoft is finally going to get their mobile browser offering up to speed... by porting the old Internet Explorer 6 (released in 2001, a few months after Opera 5) to Windows Mobile.

In a world where everyone, including the rest of Microsoft, is busy moving away from IE6 and all of its problems, Microsoft's Windows Mobile unit thought it was a good idea to wipe the dust off IE6 and give it new life.

At least it supposedly supports Flash.