- From: Philippe Lhoste <PhiLho@GMX.net>
- Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 09:36:51 +0200
- To: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- CC: Doug Schepers <doug@schepers.cc>, www-svg@w3.org
Ian Hickson wrote: > On Mon, 19 Sep 2005, Doug Schepers wrote: >> Yes, it's unfortunate that Microsoft doesn't care about supporting >> standards. > > In Microsoft's defence, they, like all vendors, must decide which > specifications to apply their limited resources towards. It is clear from > recent statements that Microsoft do (at least to some extent) care about > standards, for example they have been fixing a number of CSS bugs in their > Internet Explorer application. [1] Very nice, at least, they try to stick better to the standard they choose to support. > There are far more "Web" specifications and standards than any browser > vendor has the time to implement, thus, not all specs get implemented. I believe that what Doug meant is that they prefer to implement their own proprietary set of specs than use an existing standard, even when both are very similar. It is probably similar workpower (actually, writting their own specs probably consummed much more workpower) but Microsoft chose to play on its own -minefield- playground... Of course, you can argue that MS' own specs fit better to their needs, and they can derive as much as they want, and do whatever they want. After all, they are used to see everybody copy them, so why bother? Microsoft came quite lately to the Internet field, which was already quite widespread, so they had to play by the rules. Well, more or less, they played with Netscape at "see my own new nifty proprietary tags/features", and "I think this CSS rule sucks (margin/padding/border for example) so I implement my own rule"... But in the vector graphic field, there is not such widespread use (except on the Flash side, but it is already proprietary, so no much room for cheating) so they believe they can do their own rules. After all, they drop even their old vector graphic language (or is it an evolution?). > [1] e.g. http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/09/02/460115.aspx Note: I am not a Microsoft basher, I do use MS products, program for MS systems, and find they are not so bad in many fields. But I just give my gut feelings on this precise topic. -- Philippe Lhoste -- (near) Paris -- France -- http://Phi.Lho.free.fr -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Received on Friday, 23 September 2005 07:37:39 UTC