Microsoft quote about IE7

[Harlan Messinger]

I'm speechless. I hope the reality matches the words. And I wish they'd
said "under standards-compliant mode" instead of "under strict mode" so
as to include Transitional when the DOCTYPE includes a URL.

"In the case of CSS used for IE, we believe we are making the right
decision by fixing bugs present in IE6 under strict mode even when this
results in a change in rendering for pages."

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...css_compat.asp

[Spartanicus]

Harlan Messinger <hm*******************@comcast.netwrote:

>I'm speechless. I hope the reality matches the words. And I wish they'd
said "under standards-compliant mode" instead of "under strict mode" so
as to include Transitional when the DOCTYPE includes a URL.

"In the case of CSS used for IE, we believe we are making the right
decision by fixing bugs present in IE6 under strict mode even when this
results in a change in rendering for pages."

I fail to see why this renders you speechless. Had they announced that
they were fixing non standard compliant behaviour regardless of quirks
or standards compliant mode, *that* would be a welcome surprise.

But the above quote is long established MS policy.

In typical MSN fashion the link doesn't work (at least not without
telling MSN what browser I use).

--
Spartanicus

[Harlan Messinger]

Spartanicus wrote:

Harlan Messinger <hm*******************@comcast.netwrote:

>I'm speechless. I hope the reality matches the words. And I wish they'd
said "under standards-compliant mode" instead of "under strict mode" so
as to include Transitional when the DOCTYPE includes a URL.

"In the case of CSS used for IE, we believe we are making the right
decision by fixing bugs present in IE6 under strict mode even when this
results in a change in rendering for pages."

I fail to see why this renders you speechless.

Because it came true. Because they spent years ignoring the bugs and
noncompliance in IE6 instead of bothering to fix them, so I really
wasn't expecting a great showing for IE7, and expected them to be more
concerned with a backlash from people whose pages changed their appearance.

Had they announced that
they were fixing non standard compliant behaviour regardless of quirks
or standards compliant mode, *that* would be a welcome surprise.

But the above quote is long established MS policy.

Many is the time they've spoken standards and then ignored them.

>
In typical MSN fashion the link doesn't work (at least not without
telling MSN what browser I use).

I was using Firefox.

[VK]

Because it came true. Because they spent years ignoring the bugs and

noncompliance in IE6 instead of bothering to fix them, so I really
wasn't expecting a great showing for IE7, and expected them to be more
concerned with a backlash from people whose pages changed their appearance.

Conditional comments are supported since IE 5.0 and since about that
time I'm using them, so no impact on my solutions.
Many people for whatever reason seems decided do not use the documented
parser instructions proposed by UA producer. Instead they used obscure
bugs in a particular UA version as the way for abnormal stylesheet
parsing exit. I'm sorry if their current solutions may suffer from bug
fixes on IE7, but this is the choice they once made: no one forced it
on them.

Micro$oft must die!

:-)

[Spartanicus]

Harlan Messinger <hm*******************@comcast.netwrote:

>>"In the case of CSS used for IE, we believe we are making the right
decision by fixing bugs present in IE6 under strict mode even when this
results in a change in rendering for pages."

I fail to see why this renders you speechless.

Because it came true. Because they spent years ignoring the bugs and
noncompliance in IE6 instead of bothering to fix them, so I really
wasn't expecting a great showing for IE7, and expected them to be more
concerned with a backlash from people whose pages changed their appearance.

You weren't expecting a great showing for IE7, but you are now? IE7 does
little more than fix a few of the most annoying CSS bugs, only a few of
the omissions in CSS 2 support are addressed.

Had they announced that
they were fixing non standard compliant behaviour regardless of quirks
or standards compliant mode, *that* would be a welcome surprise.

But the above quote is long established MS policy.

Many is the time they've spoken standards and then ignored them.

They still are judging by the level of CSS2 support in IE7.

>In typical MSN fashion the link doesn't work (at least not without
telling MSN what browser I use).

I was using Firefox.

No matter, using a spoofed browser ID they let nothing through.

--
Spartanicus

[deko]

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de...css_compat.asp

That was an interesting read, but it's not like IE can now be trusted to display
pages properly.

Here's another excerpt from that same MSDN page:

"Pages authored under non-strict mode (quirks) will not change behavior in IE7
and will not be affected by broken CSS filters. Under strict mode, we have made
and will continue to make changes to be more standard-compliant."

In other words, if you have pages in HTML 4.01 Transitional (who doesn't), it's
a crap shoot.

Conditional Comments directing IE to it's own stylesheet will continue to be my
solution.

[Spartanicus]

"deko" <de**@nospam.comwrote:

>"Pages authored under non-strict mode (quirks) will not change behavior in IE7
and will not be affected by broken CSS filters. Under strict mode, we have made
and will continue to make changes to be more standard-compliant."

In other words, if you have pages in HTML 4.01 Transitional (who doesn't), it's
a crap shoot.

A valid Transitional doctype that include the URL triggers "standards
compliant" mode (erroneously referred to as "strict mode" on the MSDN
page).

On the question of who doesn't have Transitional pages, the answer is
many of us.

--
Spartanicus

[VK]

Conditional Comments directing IE to it's own stylesheet will continue to be my

solution.

Unless sometimes you only need a single fix (or two) to compensate
IE's behavior. In such case managing a whole separate stylesheet is an
overkill IMHO.
For such occasions there is another official (thus not be scared to
have it fixed one day) way: over expressions:

/* this rule will be parsed by any standard UA */
font-size: 100%;

/*this rule will be parsed by IE5only and it will
* override the previous rule */
font-size: expression(screen.width>1024?"120%":"100%");

That is not necessary to be an expression, a primitive value is OK as
well:
width: expression("100%");

[deko]

>>"Pages authored under non-strict mode (quirks) will not change behavior in IE7

>>and will not be affected by broken CSS filters. Under strict mode, we have
made
and will continue to make changes to be more standard-compliant."

In other words, if you have pages in HTML 4.01 Transitional (who doesn't),
it's
a crap shoot.

A valid Transitional doctype that include the URL triggers "standards
compliant" mode (erroneously referred to as "strict mode" on the MSDN
page).

As I understand it, there is strict:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

and transitional:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

Are you are saying that these two DOCTYPEs are identical as long as the url is
included?

My understanding is that Transitional (regardless of the URL) does not support
deprecated elements such as:

BASEFONT
CENTER
FONT
S
STRIKE
U

APPLET
DIR
ISINDEX
MENU

That is, if you want these presentational attributes, you have to put them in a
stylesheet, as opposed to the markup.

Are there any other differences between Strict and Transitional?

[deko]

Unless sometimes you only need a single fix (or two) to compensate

IE's behavior. In such case managing a whole separate stylesheet is an
overkill IMHO.

I have a separate stylesheet specifically for IE6. And also for IE5. And if
(or when) I need to, I will have another for IE7. But these stylesheets only
contain elements that need to be overridden (usually an ID or class that needs
height, margin or padding adjustments). If IE requires special treatment, so be
it. But I will not allow any non-standard CSS in my primary stylesheet.

[Spartanicus]

"deko" <de**@nospam.comwrote:

>A valid Transitional doctype that include the URL triggers "standards
compliant" mode (erroneously referred to as "strict mode" on the MSDN
page).

As I understand it

Before continuing have a look at
http://www.quirksmode.org/css/quirksmode.html
currently your understanding of the terminology appears to be incorrect.

--
Spartanicus

[deko]

Before continuing have a look at

http://www.quirksmode.org/css/quirksmode.html
currently your understanding of the terminology appears to be incorrect.

So WITH the url is strict mode, and WITHOUT is quirks mode - but both are
Transitional if the DOCTYPE specifies Transitional, and thus both are distinct
from HTML Strict... is this correct?

[Spartanicus]

"deko" <de**@nospam.comwrote:

>Before continuing have a look at
http://www.quirksmode.org/css/quirksmode.html
currently your understanding of the terminology appears to be incorrect.

So WITH the url is strict mode, and WITHOUT is quirks mode - but both are
Transitional if the DOCTYPE specifies Transitional, and thus both are distinct
from HTML Strict... is this correct?

No, either you haven't understood the document at the provided url, or
it doesn't explain it properly (unlikely).

I haven't got time to read the document myself, this is it in a
nutshell: Transitional vs Strict document types govern what HTML is
allowed in a document labeled with such a doctype.

Completely separate from that are the 2 major rendering modes (there is
a minor third): "standards compliant mode" and "quirks mode". These
modes were introduced by IE6. MS were widely lambasted for having
introduced these modes, most experts are of the opinion that introducing
this schism was a serious error. But MS being the mogul that it is,
other browser manufacturers effectively had to follow suit and introduce
the same modes in order to achieve better compatibility with the web at
large.

Browsers who operate in "quirks mode" deliberately act in a non standard
compliant manner. MS mainly wanted to hide the fact that IE before
version 6 misinterpreted the CSS box model. Fixing the box model
rendering in IE6 would have led to many web sites breaking since many
web "designers" only checked their results in IE, ergo they were unaware
of the problem. MS reasoned that these designers, ignorant of the w3c
standards were unlikely to use a doctype declaration above their
documents, so in their misguided judgement they decided to have the
presence of a number of defined doctypes trigger the new to IE6
"standards mode", in which the box model rendering would occur according
to w3c standard, in other cases IE6 would switch to "quirks mode", in
which IE6 for the most part emulated the various flaws of IE5.5,
including the flawed box model rendering.

--
Spartanicus