7 March 2008

Microsoft has defended an Internet Explorer 8 (IE 8) roadmap that gambles on the successful completion of unbaked standards and qualified support of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) initiatives.

Chris Wilson, IE platform architect, said Microsoft had picked elements of HTML 5 and CSS 2.1 from the W3C that it believes are reliable and stable. He went on to add, Microsoft will put its own resources behind the standards work to ensure successful completion.

Wilson explained when challenged by one delegate (of an IE 8 session) on the wisdom of backing unfinished standards out of the gate:

once we pick something we invest in that area and put people in the standards effort.

Microsoft is not alone in banking on HTML 5 and CSS 2.1. Mozilla already supports HTML 5 in Firefox, and there is also support for CSS 2.1 in Firefox and Opera. While support is not universal, it is a beginning; support across all browsers should help simplify and save time on development of web applications.

Microsoft is remaining patient in its attitude in some areas. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), for example, are being recommended by the W3C. It is included in Firefox and supported in Safari. But Wilson used the excuse of limited resources and indicated IE 8 will not provide SVG capabilities. Microsoft gave the same reason a year ago for not porting its Silverlight media player to Linux. Wilson added:

We have to pick which technologies we support first. We have to do a complete and detailed job first before we move onto something else and do a partial job. That's certainly been a problem in the past,

No immediate plans have been made to make IE 8 compatible with the newly released Acid 3 browser test either. Microsoft only recently caught up to rival browsers by passing the previous Acid 2 test.

Among the HTML 5 features Microsoft singled out are window.location.hash for back navigation of elements within a web page, sessionStore and localStore instead of cookies and UserData, which were not cross-browser compatible, and support for Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA).

In terms of CSS 2.1, Microsoft is making a new start by dropping the troublesome Layout for rendering in the newly announced IE 8 standards mode. Floating-point elements and border collapsing using Microsoft rending are also gone.Wilson also said Microsoft is looking forward to CSS 3 for box sizing and vertical text.

In other changes to IE 8, Microsoft is working to improve management, performance, security and development. There will also be a wealth of improved add-ons.




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