RE: standard out of the box (was: IE Blog: Internet Explorer 8 and Acid2: A Milestone)

As I just mentioned, we have a lot to say on compatibility and versioning and it would be great to first be able to say all an then get in to a deep discussion. Please, let's take a holiday break and resume after we publish IE versioning...

On IE7 and IE8 side-by-side - we have considered that. I am very tempted to actually answer now, but then it would go against my own plea of pausing the discussion for a while... I promise, there are good arguments for a single application and we will bring them here soon.

Alex

-----Original Message-----
From: Todd Russell [mailto:groovechicken@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2007 3:10 PM
To: Paul Nelson (ATC)
Cc: Alex Mogilevsky; Håkon Wium Lie; www-style@w3.org
Subject: Re: standard out of the box (was: IE Blog: Internet Explorer 8 and Acid2: A Milestone)

>> So please, do the world a favor... break backward compatibility!!!
>
> I listed to a Chevron representative at the W3C Plenary who stood up
> and said, "We have over 100,000 users using systems based on the
> web. Please don't break backward compatibility." It is easy to say
> to break backward compatibility. However, the reality is that there
> are a number of large organizations who, like Chevron, are not
> willing to (or maybe can't afford to is better said) use the
> browsers that are not concerned about backward compatibility.


Again, though, as I mentioned in my first response, why can't you guys
just let people use both... 7 for backwards compatibility and 8 for
standards compatibility?  I realize how entwined IE is into the
system, so how about this suggestion... keep 7 as the main browser and
Windows Explorer foundation, but make 8 a stand-alone fat binary that
people can download and run concurrently with 7.  Make it clear to
everyone that when 9 rolls around, the old will be phased out.  That
buys you at least 5 more years at the current rate of development.
Or, upgrade everything to 8 and release 7 as a fat binary and call it
Internet Explorer Corporate Edition.  That would appease the companies
who rely on old code and allow you to move forward.

If you want to be a part of the web, though, you have to move forward
and stop dragging the wounded soldier along... it's only slowing you
down... and all the rest of us with you.  It's high time people
understood that high tech is a fast-moving industry and if you want to
play the game, expect everything to change every 5 years at max.
Either that or we just throw our hands up and go back to our
electronic word processors and Atari 2600s.

> Not quite as easy as you say.

I don't believe it is easy, but doing things for the common good never
are.

Peace,
Todd Russell

P.S.  Chevron was a bad example to apply your aside of "maybe can't
afford to" given the obscene profits they were making last year.
You'll find no sympathy for Chevron among those of use whose salaries
are not high enough to make gasoline prices a non-issue.

Received on Friday, 21 December 2007 00:10:11 UTC