DISCLAIMER: Expressed views on this blog are my own.
I wonder what Internet Explorer 9 is to Microsoft. What is the mission for this browser in this day and age because it seems to me that Microsoft is only updating Internet Explorer because it is something they started and won’t drop. I know that this is an early version of IE 9 mainly to showcase HTML 5, but some standards being supported correctly by Internet Explorer would be nice.
Attention web developers! Have you tried to include inline CSS through AJAX only to find that it doesn’t work on ANY usable version of IE! I remember Google Chrome didn’t support it at one point, but it works now. I create separate pages that have their own CSS attributes that need to be applied to the elements in order for a IE user to correctly use the page. Actually these pages are loaded into <div> elements along with the CSS. Why? These pages do not have a header or footer because they are being loaded into a div and are really small pages that do not need the whole browser window/tab to refresh. It is far quicker to retrieve the page and put it in a div, which in fact is draggable, so to me it is a window of its own. The point is is that IE needs to FIX THIS because it is an issue now that all others browsers support it.
Here is a simple solution to the problem, but I refuse to add individual page styles to the global style.css file. Regardless of whether internet explorer 9 will support INLINE CSS, I will implement a JavaScript class/prototype where the window CSS attributes are manipulated by javascript instead of CSS. I am forced to do this because even if IE 9 catches on, there will still be users of IE 7 and 8 that will use my site and therefore I must cater to them and I don’t expect IE 9 to catch on until 2012 or so, which isn’t worth my time.
I am certain if Microsoft cared about Internet explorer as much as Google or Mozilla cares for their browsers then Microsoft will either start a new browser spinoff, start Internet Explorer anew by rebuilding it entirely, or by replacing parts of Internet Explorer with new code from another branch that can be started off with the mission to rewrite archaic code as well as their dependencies. I only say this because I think Microsoft doesn’t care about IE as long as it is a browser and mostly works. To be honest, I tend to think that way too! As long as my website works in IE, I don’t care!
Why do I say rewrite or rebuild IE? There is a newly built computer at work running Win7 and IE 8, but guess what? IE 8 crashes or stalls for a very long time. Firefox is mainly used on that computer though Google Chrome is there as well. IE 8 is really slow on older computers indicating that there are things in the program that need to be changed. IE 8 is essentially, in my view, buggy and a security risk. I assume that IE 9 is built from IE 8 and keep my view on it based on experiences with IE 8. The fact that IBM wants its employees to make Firefox the default browser doesn’t shock me at all. Personally as of this year, I’ve been prone to switch default browsers to Chrome or Firefox or other computers just because IE 8 tends to be a problem somewhere along the road.
It dawns upon me, every time I hear about Microsoft, “What are they doing? Microsoft isn’t focused. What is their mission nowadays?” People see me as a Microsoft lover, but honestly I am only a Windows lover. Microsoft does tend to make good products now and then, but IE is one of the worst software infractions and whoever created IE along with the current maintainers should be arrested. Maybe that’s going a little too far, but something needs to be done and it needs to be one of those paths I talks about above. I downright support destroy and create!
Didn’t or isn’t Microsoft researching/developing a new browser using tab isolation? Gazelle FREESTYLE!
I personally do not develop for IE 6, 7, Firefox < 3.5. IE 8+, Opera 10+, Google Chrome 4+, Mozilla Firefox 3.5+ and Safari 4+ are the only desktop browsers I look to supporting for any website I create.
