Internet Explorer Sucks

And Micorsoft Knows It, but Won't Fix It

May 15, 2007

This is a known IE 6&7 defect - incorrect support of <!DOCTYPE> declaration. -Keith Seyffarth
15 May, 2007
In response to a page layout issue on some web pages.

6 and 7 ???

Nice to see Microsoft responding with their typical balls out sense of urgency.

-Colin McWilliams
15 May 2007

Yeah, typical M$.

From M$:

We heard the feedback from the developer community that has asked us for a long time to move to a more standard-compliant rendering behavior. We are balancing this request with the needs of our customers to not have their pages broken. To find a balance we introduced a strict mode in IE6 that lets authors opt in to the more standards-compliant rendering. 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. As a side product, content from an older strict version might break when we have to do behavior changes to be more complaint. This has happened to the broken CSS filters. They relied on specific implementation behavior rather than the CSS specifications.

Translation:
We know our product sucks, but in the interest of continuing to support defective web sites designed with the expectation of our product to continue to be non-functional, we have decided to continue to provide a non-functional product, rather than address any of the many known defects in IE with our new release.

The correct solution is that M$ should fix IE. Maybe over the course of the next several security updates and patches. Hey, at that rate, it will be fixed by August! Give users warnings that as IE begins to support the internet, broken web sites will slowly no longer be supported. This will definitely improve the internet, and will definitely improve IE.

Of course, the probability of M$ doing this is about as likely as them fixing any other piece of broken, productivity reducing software they have out there.

Gotta love 'em.