I’ve said before that I used to work on Internet Explorer. But when I worked on it IE really was effectively the only browser out there. We actually took compatibility with Netscape very seriously, but then we went way ahead and implemented more features from the standards. The problem is, we made mistakes in those implementations and since there were no other browsers, our mistakes actually became a sort of standard.

But those days are long long gone. Now it’s far more often the case that my code works “the first time” on every browser out there except for Internet Explorer. The other browsers are all more standards compliant by far. They also score better on the Acid Tests, and that’s why I love the Acid Tests.

When asked, Microsoft will say that the Acid Tests are random, that they aren’t developed with real world scenarios in mind. There is a great Microspeak term invented at Microsoft: the Acid Tests are a forcing function.

A forcing function is a situation or constraint that forces you to make a decision you would not make otherwise. For instance, in my end days at Microsoft, while working on the Windows Presentation Framework, one of the high level managers told me to come up with a plan to implement a feature that I was very outspoken about not implementing. I was given a week (I think) before presenting this plan to a group of all the highest level managers in our group. They were very sneaky saying that they didn’t necessarily want to implement it but if we did, how would we do it? The idea was to get me to do the work under false pretenses, then they would force me to put it in the product since it was already done. While talking about this later, the term forcing function came up, I hadn’t heard it before that. That situation was one of the nails on the coffin of my relationship with Microsoft.

Now that I’ve finished with my Microsoft story, I’ll say that learning the term was the best part of the experience because it describes that kind of situation very concisely.

The snakes were the forcing function that made me decide to mow my lawn on a regular basis.

If you decide to go live on the 10th, that’s going to be a forcing function for about five other required sub-projects and your bill is going to be a little higher than usual.

So Microsoft, it’s time to take your own medicine. We don’t care if you don’t think the Acid Tests represent real world scenarios. The truth is, fixing these bugs to pass these tests will actually and truthfully make your browser better. All the other browsers have proven it’s quite possible. You’re not protesting, as I was, out of a belief that the forcing function will make you do the wrong thing. You’re protesting because you’re incapable of actually fixing your browser.

Microsoft, please get out of the browser business and make everyone’s life easier. I’m tired of waiting for you to figure out how to write software.

For those people using Macs with the gamma still set to 1.8, I’m happier with them getting brighter slightly washed out images than PC users getting murky, dirty looking images. Eventually all the Mac users will be at 2.2 anyway.

One thing I was really happy about was that iPhoto images are not affected. They look the same with either gamma because of the use of color profiles. I wish the web would get the whole color profiles situation under control.

Firefox has released a security update. Firefox isn’t my primary browser, that’s Safari, so sometimes I feel like there’s a security update available every time I open Firefox or Opera.

Of course I test on them, though. I like that there are multiple browsers now, it’s a much healthier community. And they’re all better than Internet Explorer. Open source also seems to really work for browsers. I think any time you need to conform to standards, your product should be open source. If there’s predefined work that people can do for free, by all means, allow them to do it! I wonder if Microsoft is aware of that concept?

One thing I would like is for Firefox to render form elements, such as text inputs, the same as other browsers. Firefox adds some space around them that’s not styleable, so firefox inputs are always a couple of pixels bigger than they are in other browsers.

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 today. I downloaded it and am really hopeful that, well, basically that it will cause less trouble in my life than previous versions.

I have a long history with Internet Explorer. In some ways it’s kind of weird to be watching it from afar. The entire Internet Explorer group, including me, started to work on another project right after IE6. I think only one or two people still work on it that worked on it with me in the IE6 days. I have to admit, I feel sentimental about those times.

The goals are different, too. When I worked on it, standards were important, but there wasn’t much competition. When people say IE wasn’t standards compliant, that wasn’t because we weren’t trying, it was mostly because there just wasn’t another point of reference. Things were different from IE7 on, and I’m sure it must have been a challenge to transform an engine toward standards compliance and not have as much freedom. I’m sure there were a couple of small, but important bugs that required huge changes.

Anyway, congratulations, and here’s to standards!

Here’s what you want to avoid:

<button type="submit" class="foo" />

And instead just do this:

<button type="submit" class="foo"></button>

Now all of the problems Internet Explorer has caused for you will be solved… until you find the next problem. It just makes me think about how they say Acid2 is not a standard and therefore is less important. Yep, just keep telling yourself that Internet Explorer team. Things are already working great, how could you possibly improve?