IE7 and Standards Compliance

I had some mild to moderate hope that IE7 was going to blaze a new trail in web browsing. What else should I expect from having over 4 years to work on IE7? Apparently they don't feel the same need to lead the way anymore....

Microsoft's new Internet Explorer 7 browser won't pass a stringent standards test that rivals have embraced.

In its browser blog, Microsoft acknowledged that IE 7 would not pass the Web Standards Project's Acid2 test, which examines a browser's support for W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) recommendations including CSS1 (Cascading Style Sheets), HTML4 and PNG (Portable Network Graphics).

"We will not pass this test when IE7 ships," Chris Wilson, lead program manager for the Web platform in IE, wrote in the IE blog. "We fully recognize that IE is behind the game today in CSS support. We've dug through the Acid2 test and analyzed IE's problems with the test in some great detail, and we've made sure the bugs and features are on our list--however, there are some fairly large and difficult features to implement, and they will not all sort to the top of the stack in IE7."

The Article

What a surprise...

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not a "Microsoft basher", but if we are honest Microsoft follow their own standards and seem to dislike following anyone else's

I have heard that ASP.NET 2 will spit out complient XHTML/CSS code, which would be a nice change

Despite the fact that the browser will obviously continue to have issues (what browser doesn't really), I'm optimistic about the release. It does mark an effort on MS's part to meet the needs of their customers. Hopefully they've received the message that they are not completely invulnerable to public whim...and will grow their browser in a quicker and more desirable direction in the future. I expect that we will start to see updates to IE a little more frequently than we have in the past once IE 7 is released.

I think the thing to focus on is that the future is web standards compliance for a multitude of reasons and after 4 years, IE7 still won't meet this basic need.

What are the needs of the customers you speak of? Stability? There's so much more beyond just security. Things need to work too and we're apparently not going to see a browser that works. Usually when products are released they're better than the alternatives. We know that won't happen and we still have about a year to go before IE7 is really released.

Regardless of whether or not IE7 is wicked or horrible I'm gonna stick to my firefox, I just *love* my multi-tabs

On my wish list:

I wish I could re-arrange the order of my tabs by dragging them

I also wish you could take a page already opened in a tab and move it to a seperate window (and vice versa) without sending another request to the server.

I know I want your first wish, I've thought of this often at work when going form my ASP free Forum to my webserver testing page. That's why when I get to work I open up three tabs, CSS Creator, ASP Free, my server... gotta get it right 'cause I can't rearrange.

The new window one I wouldn't use as much, tabbing is all I need hehe.

I do believe that IE7 claims tab support. Also, I think that Firefox has an extension to give some extra "power" to tabs.

Also if they really have been working on it for over 4 years, have the standards changed since development of IE7 started? I really don't know so don't bash me please . If you ever worked on a four year long project you would know that just because a new standard or technology comes out during the development cycle you can't just up and throw away your code and start over. The costs would be too high.