"That's important because Microsoft has of late embraced a standard-centric philosophy when it comes to what technology IE supports, and IE is of course the dominant browser on the market."
Microsoft has never been particularly keen on supporting real standards, they've always preferred their own formats to maintain their monopoly.
IE is the dominant browser? Who cares? If IE continues to be second rate, then the much better alternatives like Firefox, Opera and Safari will continue to gain more and more happy users. Great because it's only Microsoft who doesn't really like real and open standards and we need these standards to get a better Internet.
Leave the dirty competition and monopoly maintenance in the 90's.
Microsoft joins HTML 5 standard fray in earnest
Summary
The developer of the market-leading browser has become more actively engaged in hashing out many details of a proposed revamp of the Web page standard.
Topics
After leaving much of the creation of a new version of HTML to Apple, Google, Opera, and Mozilla, Microsoft has begun sinking its teeth into the Web standard.
The move adds clout to the effort to renovate HyperText Markup Language, the standard used to describe Web pages, which last was formally updated in 1999. In a mailing list posting on Friday, the software giant offered a host of questions and concerns with the present proposal.
"As part of our planning for future work, the IE team is reviewing the current editor's draft of the HTML5 spec and gathering our thoughts. We want to share our feedback and discuss this in the working group," said Internet Explorer Program Manager Adrian Bateman in the message. "I will post our notes as we collect them so we can iterate on our thinking more quickly. At this stage we have more questions than answers, but I believe that discussing them in public is the best way to make progress."
HTML 5 in its current draft form includes a number of significant advancements, notably several that make the Web a better foundation for applications, not just static Web pages. Among the present HTML 5 features are built-in video and audio, the ability to store data on a local computer to enable use of Web applications even when offline, Web Workers that can perform computational chores in the background without bogging down Web application responsiveness, Canvas for creating sophisticated two-dimensional graphics, and drag-and-drop for better Web application user interfaces.
The formal HTML standard is under the governance of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and Microsoft's Chris Wilson is a co-chairman of the W3C group developing HTML. But much of the course of HTML 5 has been set so far outside that by a separate effort called the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), which browser makers launched years ago when they didn't like the XHTML 2.0 direction the W3C was trying to take HTML.
Microsoft hasn't been uninvolved in HTML 5. It's the origin of technology in HTML 5 called ContentEditable, which lets elements of Web pages be edited in place by people using a browser. And Microsoft said its newest browser,Internet Explorer 8, also supports these HTML 5 components: the DOM Store, Cross Document Messaging, Cross Domain Messaging, and Ajax Navigation.
But the new message indicates Microsoft is getting serious about the effort, digging into many nitty-gritty aspects of the proposed specification. That's important because Microsoft has of late embraced a standard-centric philosophy when it comes to what technology IE supports, and IE is of course the dominant browser on the market.
Microsoft declined to comment for this story.
Google, Apple, and Mozilla have been trumpeting HTML 5 features in their latest browsers, but Microsoft takes a more cautious tone.
"The support of ratified standards (that Web developers) can use is something that we are extremely supportive of," said Amy Barzdukas, general manager for IE, in a July interview. "In some cases, it can be premature to start claiming support for standards that are not yet in fact standards."
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. Talkback Most Recent of 14 Talkback(s)
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Mikael_z10th Aug 2009 -
MS is the one promoting standards
Microsoft has never been particularly keen on supporting real standards, they've always preferred their own formats to maintain their monopoly.
Mozilla and Apple are the ones who didn't want to support "real" standards and instead, starting coming up with their own. From the article:
The formal HTML standard is under the governance of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and Microsoft's Chris Wilson is a co-chairman of the W3C group developing HTML. But much of the course of HTML 5 has been set so far outside that by a separate effort called the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), which browser makers launched years ago when they didn't like the XHTML 2.0 direction the W3C was trying to take HTML
MS is on the W3C which is the owner of the HTML standard. It is Mozilla and Apple that, and I quote, didn't like the XHTML 2.0 direction the W3C was trying to take HTML and decided to create their own, non standard format. I prefer Firefox so I'm not pro-MS or anti-Mozilla but in this case, MS is the one working with the standard and Mozilla and Apple are the ones who are "going their own way".
NonZealot10th Aug 2009 -
That's not quite correct.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential. W3C is a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding.
ISO - International Organization for Standards and ECMA International are standards bodies.
As per the direction of Web development re: HTML, W3 is developing proposals that can become standards (later handed off to ISO). XHTML2 was a radical departure from the way HTML was done before (as per HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.1, HTML5, etc.) which would have required the browser vendors (Opera, Microsoft (Trident), Google (WebKit), Apple (WebKit), Mozilla Foundation (Gecko), etc.) to do a major engine rewrite of how things were parsed. That is why XHTML2 dies.
B.O.F.H.10th Aug 2009 -
So XML is not a standard ?
XML has been defined by a working group working under W3C, there is no corresponding or endorsing ISO standard for XML IMHO, so if I read you well XML will become a standard when ISO will endorse it ?
Another example: DO-178 was standardized by RTCA / EUROCAE, not ISO. However, compliance with DO 178 (level A, B or C) is still mandatory in the avionics industry.
However, I agree that standards can die or even never be used. However, it does not depend on which organization is publishing them, but on a lot of technical and/or political reasons.
atari_z10th Aug 2009 -
XML is ISO 15022.
There are several standards bodies (every country has at least one), ISO is just an international standards body (US has ANSI, for example), as is the ITU (telecommunications standards on an international level). RTCA is as follows:
RTCA, Inc. is a private, not-for-profit corporation that develops consensus-based recommendations regarding communications, navigation, surveillance, and air traffic management (CNS/ATM) system issues. RTCA functions as a Federal Advisory Committee. Its recommendations are used by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as the basis for policy, program, and regulatory decisions and by the private sector as the basis for development, investment and other business decisions.
EUROCAE is a nonprofit organization formed to provide a European forum for resolving technical problems with electrical equipment used for air transport.
The basic idea about these standards bodies is that it provides a baseline for interoperability (for example, each country has plug standards, thus if you get an electrical device in a given country, you should be able to plug it in a standard outlet in the wall and it will work, though it may not work in another country that has a different standard for wall sockets). In wireless (mobile) telecommunications, you have GSM, UMTS, WCDMA, etc. that will work (though local laws may set spectrum allocations) between cities and countries (I have a European GSM phone, uses some different spectrum for parts 900MHz v. 850MHz in the US) but it works in the US or Europe or Asia or Australia because GSM is standardized.B.O.F.H.10th Aug 2009 -
M$ will be making their own rules
According to past information from Microsoft, IE 8 is their last browser from this line. They are starting from scratch or adding Webkit to their new browser. So, anything that would be considered standard to them would be pushed aside like all other version of their IE browser.
As a web developer, I find IE to be the worst to work with. Making a page compatible with previous versions because people refuse to upgrade is a waste of time.
Maarek10th Aug 2009 -
RE: Microsoft joins HTML 5 standard fray in earnest
Microsoft supporting standards finally instead of bastardising them for it's own purposes can surely only be a good thing.
At least we no longer have to look at stupid "best viewed in Internet Explorer" at the bottom of so many webpages any more.
Also, one of my current big problems is our inability to use anything other than Windows as an OS because so many of our customers use web-apps which require ActiveX controls and only work on Windoze/IE. So, for me, HTML5 can't come quick enough, and if MS are in on the development then they've less reason to undermine it later - we're all winners if that happens
alec.wood@...11th Aug 2009 -
Now we have Apple destroying web standards
At least we no longer have to look at stupid "best viewed in Internet Explorer" at the bottom of so many webpages any more.
Nope, we've traded that for mobile websites that look at the User Agent string and only render properly when they detect mobile Safari even though you are running a more standards compliant Opera browser (100 on ACID3) on your Windows Mobile phone. Ain't progress grand?
NonZealot11th Aug 2009 -
Re: Now we have Apple destroying web standards
These come across to me as more of a, "feature" then
a, "requirement". Only a very small amount of websites
include mobile phone versions, even though some of
them are hugely popular (facebook, anyone?)
I don't know what you're complaining about, though -
if my phone can display and let me navigate a full-
thing with no functionality.
supermadman11th Aug 2009 -
Err..
Uh, that was weird.
if my phone can display and let me navigate a full-
tiny thing with no functionality.supermadman11th Aug 2009 -
For crying out loud!
Uh, that was weird.
if my phone can display and let me navigate a full-
with no functionality.supermadman11th Aug 2009 -
It is about damn time.
I just got done spending 8 hours scouring thousands of lines of rendered HTML and CSS trying to pin point one pixel that caused a whole site to explode in IE6 and only IE6.
Nothing could make me happier at this moment than the notion of MS scraping Trident for Web kit.
I hate IE6 with a passion. No other piece of software has caused me more grief than IE 6 an to a lesser degree IE 7. Not even the dreaded (shudder) Netscape 4.
I am looking forward to seeing how ppl with try to vilify MS's efforts to get serious about standards.
Duke E. Love12th Aug 2009 -
RE: Microsoft joins HTML 5 standard fray in earnest
Did you really just say "Windoze"?
That makes me giggle uncontrollably for some reason.Duke E. Love12th Aug 2009 -
We need to toss html where it belongs...
In the garbage.
It's time to move forward. It's really difficult to believe we're still using something that amounts to a thousand bandages on top of TEX. We need to throw it away, and start over with a true application model.
XAML and the WPF model, as much as I dislike it, is the way applications on the web should head. The display of static images and raw text is not only resource intensive and inflexible, but it's also merely a hack in a system not designed to do 1/10 of what it does.
Spiritusindomit@...16th Aug 2009
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