Internet Explorer 7! [Yaaaaawn]

Wow! Internet Explorer 7 will have tabbed browsing! What an innovative and novel idea!

Riiiiiiight...

Slashdot pointed to this story about why IE7 could have been a great product, but mired in all their non-standard legacy extensions and continued non-conformance to current web standards it will just be more of the same. The author suggests boycotting IE7 all together.

You would think this is just a rant from some anti-Microsoft fanatic but it isn't, Microsoft needs to come into compliane with web standards so developers can write proper code foa all browers to parse. Isn't MS a member of W3C? Don't they help set those standards? I thought they were. Maybe I am wrong.

I have used FireFox almost since it's inception (when it used to be called what? Phoenix? I don't remember now, it's gone through a few name changes). Konqueror in Linux and dabbled with Opera. All solid, secure and compliant browsers (with tabbed browsing, btw). I only use IE for work. Why? Well it's simple, the non-standard Microsoft-centric extensions that we've used in our intranet break in compliant browsers. :-|

Use a real browser, write standards-based web code.

Updated: Aug. 4, 2005 at 1:36pm
In the blog posting used as reference by Paul Thurrott in his column, Chris Wilson ended with this comment:

We fully recognize that IE is behind the game today in CSS support. We’ve dug through the Acid 2 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. I believe we are doing a much better service to web developers out there in IE7 by fixing our known bang-your-head-on-the-desk bugs and usability problems first, and prioritizing the most commonly-requested features based on all the feedback we've had.

I do want to be clear that I believe the Web Standards Project and my team has a common goal of making the lives of web developers better by improving standards support, and I’m excited that we’re working together to that end.

Read both posts and decide for yourself whether MS is making strides to better standards compliance or not...