Yes, how to communicate it is a key issue. But the problem is also that people tend to be egoistical and lazy, so even if we give them a lot of arguments they’ll probably keep on using IE as long as it’s pre-installed on their machine.

Asking users is definitely one of the most importat measures to take to get the best product out there, no question about that.

Also, it is true that end users are not interested in design matters but rather in usage matters, IE features of the browser. In other terms, giving new, useful and unique features to a browser is the only way to attract users now. So the question is: what do users want in their browsers that is not already there? The only way to know is to ask users.

That was indeed a thorough comment.
When it comes to CSS support, I’m not sure exactly how complete the different web browser manufacturers claim that their support for it is. Safari is the only one passing the Acid test, but that version haven’t been released yet. And then again, it has been debated if the Acid test is perfect in its testing.

You definitely get my point of the end user not gaining anything from standards support in IE.

…do you really do think that web as a medium would become better if we manage somehow to pressure MS to adhere to standards?

Well, yes and no. It might get better when it comes to creating validating pages that would work better in screen readers and such, and it should keep development time and costs down so web developers can focus on creating better and more groundbreaking web sites instead of wasting time covering up for flaws in web browsers that don’t (fully) support web standards.

I’ve been toying with the idea myself to create a web site out of an image, to be a 100% sure that it will look the same and the layout will be intact on every OS and in every web browser. And I guess most people that are new to HTML, CSS etc ask the same question: why does it have to be so hard? Then, of course, a little of it falls back to accessibility, screen readers, PDAs and so on.

But still, it’s an intriguing thought!

“Now, these people (developers and designers) will start demanding from Microsoft that they implement at least the CSS 2.1 specification.”

I can find this or some other technology easier to use and more productive, but what benefit is inthere for end-user? And what exactly could be argument when pressuring MS about adhering to standards. And also, do you really do think that web as a medium would become better if we manage somehow to pressure MS to adhere to standards? I do not think so. Put best tool in the world in unskilled hands and you will see horrible results. With or without standards.
Take a look at PDF, Postscript or Flash. Have you ever heard of anyone manually coding e.g. PDF page? Why? Because there are tools that generate PDF from any document without any errors (by error I mean not complying with standards).
Now, take a look at web development. In my oppinion most normal thing in the world for a designer would be to “draw” page in Photoshop and then export it as a web page. Is it really possible that no company in the world is capable or interesting in producing such a tool. I really cannot see how harder is automatical coding of Postscript page (for example) than coding of XHTML+CSS page. Can someone enlighten me?

I agree that web developers start demanding that (CSS 2.1 support and other things) from Microsoft, no question about that. And that’s a good thing.

But what I’m talking about is how to get the end users, that don’t care about web standards at all, to use your product. And I think by only matching the interface features of other web browsers (with things like tabs etc) Microsoft would be home free.

The alternative is using MS-specific hacks like ‘filter’ or ‘expression’ to do what you can easily do with standard CSS.

Well, I try to keep my promises
When it comes to Firefox, I personally really like the functionality with adding extensions.

Tommy,

Oh, absolutely, of course we web developers want to write one set of code that will work in all web browsers; that’s one of the major reasons why we promote web standards so much.

And I think that Firefox, Opera and Safari gaining more and more of the web browser market has been a good thing, since it has forced web developers to learn about standards and code properly. That in turn has also opened up their eyes when it comes to IE’s shortcomings.

However, what I was going for in this post is that the enhancements they offered in beta 1 would maybe (probably?) be sufficient to, maybe not eliminate but diminish, their competition so much that it wouldn’t bother them.

Developers and designers would rather create one version that works in all browsers (including IE) than effectively having to do two versions (IE vs. the rest). I think this is putting a little pressure on Microsoft. In order to maintain their market share, they essentially have two options:

1) Eliminate the competition, so that everyone will have to do it the Microsoft way.

2) Adhere to the standards supported by the competition (of course adding some proprietary stuff to get the upper hand).

You kept your promise to publish today:) I admire you for being such a Duracell-rabbit.

I agree with you. Personally I hope that IE want take more market share with the release of IE 7. If there was no competition between the browsers, when would they have done a new browser release…
But they lack the useful extensions that you can download for Firefox. So that will be a good reason for users to stick to Mozilla´s.