And then reinstall it from an easy-to-find location, in case you want to surf the web? Maybe. Personally I’d rather see them get a dialog with a number of web browser options instead (a bit hard for them to choose then, though).

You are right! Kestrel has fixed both the issues I had! Looking forward to the release.

Vlad,

Thanks for the interview link, it gives some perspective.

David,

Thanks! I will do my best to get back to you on this,

Carl, Vlad,

Overall, well-built web sites should work from the get-go with IE 7 (some IE 7 bugs excepted). But, I do believe Carl has a point here too. Most people don’t know about web standards and were shocked about the upgrade. For instance, a lot of web sites use a doctype which will trigger the standards mode without knowing so.

Just think that the default doctype in .NET examples and templates uses an XHTML 1 Transitional doctype, that will indeed get them into a more strict mode, which in turn will make them hate the upgrade (given the strict rendering differences between IE 6 and IE7). Just imagine the difference in that height in CSS is fixed in IE 7, so it behaves as it should, instead of the min-height behavior in IE 6.

So, I’d say you’re both right.
But, at the end of the day, if IE won’t support web standards enough, many companies won’t be able to motivate the extra costs of making something work in IE. And then Microsoft will be stuck with the people not knowing about interface development at all (the same people who complain as soon as things don’t work in any other web browser in IE, and at the same time don’t think for a second that the fault actually might be theirs).

And for Microsoft to let their web development business to depend on people and companies, no matter how large, that refuse to evolve and to actually learn their trade, is a very risky path to take. Therefore, if Microsoft don’t implement standards as good as, or better, than the competitors, they will, in time, lose their dominance over the web browser market. For sure.

Scott Powers: Standards Compliance, though, is a must for IE. But, like I said, those screams have fallen on deaf ears…

I don’t believe calls for compliance have fallen on deaf ears. I think there are large corporations that have tens of millions of dollars invested in external and internal websites that oppose any changes to IE, and most vociferously oppose any layout changes. These corporations have enormous influence within Microsoft.

In the eyes of many, IE7 — by complying with W3C recommendations — broke the web. Huge sites such as Yahoo! had to spend significant amounts of time energy and resources to adapt to the new standards-conforming browser. This is the burden of having 80% marketshare: folks who have never heard of the W3C complain to Microsoft that the new browser broke their site.

Microsoft knew it would take a huge PR hit from its most influential customers by moving IE towards W3C compliance but did so anyway. Now, how do those who “screamed” for W3C compliance react? We must all answer that individually.

Feel free to send us any bug reports you have on our XPath implementation. We’ve just included a new XSLT and XPath engine in the latest weeklies of Kestrel, so you may find that they are fixed now.

Indeed it will be interesting to see what comes out of this. I think Opera would have had a stronger case if they just focused on one issue - having Windows prompt users to install/use different browsers or forcing Microsoft to comply with Web standards.

I had an opportunity to interview Håkon today about the complaint to EU. He clarified Opera’s position on the Web standards part of the complaint. Here is the interview:

http://xhtml.com/en/web-standards/conversation-with-opera/

Perhaps a better idea would be if all web professionals just started billing MS for lost revenues due to their crappy software. A few thousand bills should be enough to get some much needed publicity, that they can’t just make go away in an appeals court or just drag on until media loses interest.

The latter is obviously something every CSS Designer on the net has been screaming forever to no avail. Maybe this is the kick in the ass that MS needs. None of us can say for sure what will come of it but we can say what we would like to see come of it. And that is, most likely, much the same for all of us. Get standards compliant, period.

Really I could care less if IE is bundled with windows. People like me, and most likely everyone else reading here, only ever fire it up to download our favorite browser initially or for those highly annoying IE only websites which are getting to be fewer and fewer, thank god.

Standards Compliance, though, is a must for IE. But, like I said, those screams have fallen on deaf ears up until now so what makes any of us think they’ll hear us because Opera bitches about them? I don’t expect much to come of it but one can hope.