Forum Moderators: not2easy
IE seem to breaking with some of their "closed door" policy by releasing some news which I think is very positive for CSS developers!
The list of what's coming addresses a lot of the more popular requests for CSS support. The list of "bug" fixes promises to address mostly everything that PIE and QuirksMode highlighted in recent years:
In IE7, we will fix as many of the worst bugs that web developers hit as we can, and we will add the critical most-requested features from the standards as well. Though you won’t see (most of) these until Beta 2, we have already fixed the following bugs from PositionIsEverything and Quirksmode:
- Peekaboo bug
- Guillotine bug
- Duplicate Character bug
- Border Chaos
- No Scroll bug
- 3 Pixel Text Jog
- Magic Creeping Text bug
- Bottom Margin bug on Hover
- Losing the ability to highlight text under the top border
- IE/Win Line-height bug
- Double Float Margin Bug
- Quirky Percentages in IE
- Duplicate indent
- Moving viewport scrollbar outside HTML borders
- 1 px border style
- Disappearing List-background
- Fix width:auto
Then Chris goes on to list additional features that will be supported:
- HTML 4.01 ABBR tag
- Improved (though not yet perfect) <object> fallback
- CSS 2.1 Selector support (child, adjacent, attribute, first-child etc.)
- CSS 2.1 Fixed positioning
- Alpha channel in PNG images
- Fix :hover on all elements
- Background-attachment: fixed on all elements not just body
A word of caution perhaps and also a very clear message to be patient!
"I want to be clear that our intent is to build a platform that fully complies with the appropriate web standards, in particular CSS 2 ( 2.1, once it’s been Recommended). I think we will make a lot of progress against that in IE7 through our goal of removing the worst painful bugs that make our platform difficult to use for web developers."
and finally perhaps their recent Partnership with WaSP may well be a solid move to listening to what developers want but again that will not happen overnight, a quote from WaSP:
Had we been in months ago, maybe IE7 beta would be different. Maybe we'd be further down the road to success. Maybe.
I'm getting an inkling that something is starting to happen very slowly, but very surely..
Suzy
fully complies with the appropriate web standards
That weasel word "appropriate" does give me some concern. But I am delighted with the fixes they have announced.
That weasel word "appropriate" does give me some concern
Weasel word, sure, but Firefox only supports their interpretation of what is "appropriate" in CSS2 - for example with respect to font embedding [w3.org] (that MS is unlikely to attempt to support either). So I think we will have to wait and see, but I don't expect any big surprises there.
The list above, if delivered bug-free, is very impressive.
If all the announced fixes appear and if the fixes do not cause alternate difficulties and if they appear in a timely manner I shall be pleased. However, I am not sure how much easier it will make my developer life.
My major concern is with timely manner. The "developer" fixes will not be available for testing until some undisclosed beta2 future time - indeed MSFT has been very careful to provide no timeline.
As Vista (née Longhorn) is almost always touted in conjunction with IE7 and Vista is expected sometime next year (depending upon slippage) it may well be a year before it is released to the public.
At that time it still will not be as compliant as its competitors are now. CSS2.1 goes to last call in two weeks - several browsers already support most/all of the recommendation. By next year they will be supporting much (some already) of CSS3. At this rate catch-up will be a long time. And where/when is min/max width/height?
And the kicker - IE5.x and IE6 and quirks mode will remain for quite some time. So as developers we are simply gaining one more quirky (if less quirky) version to test for. Yippeee.
on a related note just a few hours ago the IE developement team also said this:
As for the "* HTML" selector issue - actually, it's currently fixed (that is, it no longer works) in beta 2; however, I'm on the fence as to whether we should ship that (it does help our appearance on the acid2 test), since it is in use in the web today for browser switching. I'd welcome feedback on whether we should fix it in IE7 or not.
That could be a biggie, but it's really a shot in the dark to answer..
On the one hand it could be helpful to fix it, as it would allow those who use it to leave remaining hacks in place without affecting IE7, i.e as a way to target <=IE6
but on the other, well min-height/min-width I see as an issue that might then require 2 x workarounds? :: presuming we still need one for IE7?
I read in the comments that min-height/width are fixed but haven't see an official source of this (wishful thinking or chinese whispers?) can anyone confirm/deny
I think I would go with the *Fix It* and let's deal with IE7 as a new entity once we know it's foibles. leaving it in could cause us more work..
Suzy
I think I would go with the *Fix It* and let's deal with IE7 as a new entity once we know it's foibles. leaving it in could cause us more work.
I agree. I think it's IE's pick-and-choose approach that has made IE browsers into the bugbear they are for us today. Rather than just aiming to support the standards, MS keeps second guessing the consensus opinion, resulting in all the hacks, workarounds and proprietary code we all deal with on a daily basis. I would much rather see their approach shift toward simply making as compliant a browser as they can, even if that means a little more up-front work for us dealing with IE7 as a seperate entity from IE6.
cEM
