IE9, standards, and why Acid3 isn't the priority | Hacker News Reader

IE9, standards, and why Acid3 isn't the priority

arstechnica.com

9 pointstbgvi4 comments

Although I understand their reasons on why Acid3 isn't a priority, it doesn't change the fact that they are late in everything that defines a modern browser ... CSS support, JS performance, HTML5, SVG, browser plugins, you name it.

So to get over my disappointment with them, personally I'm looking for more than a half-assed attempt ... like they did with IE7 and IE8 (although the interface changes were interesting, but that's not what people craved for).

This article seems like it's a PR piece.

Weird article. Some random bits of text thrown in, seemingly without understanding even what Acid3 is. HTML5 has little to do with it, and rounded corners even less so.

It read fine to me. It wasn't specifically about Acid3 so much as Microsofts approach to testing their standard compliance.

Summary: We don't believe Acid3 and Sunspider actually test the things browsers get used for in the real world so we are developing our test suite instead.

Cynical view: We want our own test suites so that we can pass them and show how everyone else sucks compared to us

Non Cynical view: Maybe they are right and a better suite of tests is needed to truly drive standardization for HTML5

Whichever camp you fall in the article didn't seem all that disconnected to me.

[edit]: added missing words. sometimes I type faster than I think.

I think the cynical view is actually that they want to hold the web back, and have been doing so quite successfully for many years.

Saying they're only going to implement the stuff that is used on popular sites is entirely circular because the only stuff that gets used on popular sites is the stuff that works on IE6.

Microsoft have no incentive to advance the state of the art in browsers because it just makes it easier for people to not use Windows and Office, their only money makers.

For whatever reason people don't like to take the wider, business view of things and imagine "browser wars" as some kind of sporting competition.

In the real world Microsoft won by not playing, now Google's explicit strategy is to move the state of the browser art so far forward that Microsoft has to move forward even if it plans to remain the anchor holding the web back. Seems to be working.

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