They have asked in the past, more than a few times. It started on the Scobble blog, I think, somewhere in 2004. Not once, but twice we were asked, by the WASP, via mailing lists and others, to give feedback, politely, to the MSIE development team about the needs of web developers. The request then moved to another site, the channel9 MS wiki kind of site. Again, asked to give, politely, feedback and describe needs upon which the MSIE team can focus for further development. Next in line was the IE developers blog, and again. Every time, the overall response was the same. And yesterday, the subject came up again.
Every time they received some thoughtful responses, suggestions and request. On each of those posts (and I’m not going to link to any of them, a search should not be to difficult), the main stream of ideas was/is the same. The MS answer has been basically the same as well, a lack of — should I say a refusal to ? — any solid commitment. Personally I’m seriously wondering if those multiple postings and articles are nothing more than a huge mountain of sand thrown in the eyes, and an attempt at some PR exercise. Or perhaps I do overrate the ability of the MS people to read and search the web, and understand the words written in those many articles, bug reports and rants. Or perhaps, the browser they use (IE) simply can’t browse the web… ? Anyway, it is getting quite boring in the feed reader to see this popping up again.
This time, Chris Wilson, who originally implemented IE’s support for CSS, is asking for help:
I want you all to know that specific requests and descriptions of problems in the field help us tremendously in prioritizing what we need to do.
At least they’ve heard about PositionIsEverything, and Quirksmode. Maybe there is an improvement. At least they now acknowledge that their browser isn’t exactly perfect. Step forward ? There are some good answers in the comments. Some bloggers have published their wishlist again.
Do I have anything to add to the wishlist ? Not really. Most has been said, time and again. Maybe a few things haven’t been mentioned all that often.
text/plain, then IE should respect that.width. It is unfinished, but provides a number of test cases.More generally, a real ‘standards mode’, not the fake implementation that characterises IE6. ‘cause it is really a pain to develop for that browser. And while you’re busy at it, when fixing bugs, don’t limit yourself to fixing the bugs used as filters to workaround other bugs… .
Commenting is closed for this article. If you have anything to share, feel free to contact us.
More information about these options for style and layout.