Re: Make Microsoft follow the spec.

On Mon, 26 Feb 2001 18:36:27 -0800, Chris Wilson <cwilso@microsoft.com>
wrote:

[crossed to www-style@w3c.org and f'ups set]

>Jan Roland Eriksson [mailto:jrexon@newsguy.com] wrote:
>>What I do know is that MS has deliberately shot a big hole in the bottom
>>of the CSS "FCR" [Forward Compatibility Rules]...

>Unless you work for Microsoft, please don't make presumptions about what we
>did or didn't do "deliberately".  Bugs in our CSS implementation that cause
>us to fail forward compatibility tests were not intentional.

I will take your word for that.

Which then brings up a conclusion...

  "If there was never a decision made in a board room,
   or over an internal conference room table, to go down
   the route that lead to 'FCP' violations in IE4/5+, then
   the only thing that remains to be 'put under the lupe'
   is the inner workings of MS quality check procedures for
   delivered products."

I like to think that MS programmers are good, enthusiastic, and filled
with few other personal wishes but to be able to "show off" their
personal skills and qualities as to how they can fill the requests from
their project management level.

So where did it go wrong? I mean if a faulty CSS declaration saying
'font-size=12' is to be the same as a correct 'font-size: 12px;'
declaration, while available CSS specs says nothing about that,
something needs to be fixed, and it's not the CSS specs that needs
fixing IMO.

But now the "cat has been out of the bag" for some time and common
people that develops an interest for markup and CSS tends to go with the
flow, i.e. what "works" for them in their own clients.

Following that 'ciwas' will "for ever" be filled with questions like...

  "Hi! My stylesheet works in IE, does any one now how to work
   around the 'bugs' in Mozilla/Netscape/Opera?"

...(a question to that effect was answered in ciwas as late as tonight)

The final question becomes, does WinIE have the guts to go on to make
itself spec compliant, at least in the areas where it now breaks the CSS
FCP rules?

I don't have much hope, but would happily accept a surprise of course.

-- 
Jan Roland Eriksson <rex@css.nu> .. <URL:http://css.nu/>

Received on Tuesday, 27 February 2001 15:10:51 UTC