Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
Very interesting post and comments regarding IE7’s support of CSS. The post author writes about how IE7 fails the WaSP’s Acid2 test. As was noted in comments, this test isn’t necessarily the be all end all that it’s made out to be. For instance, according to Ziff-Davis UK Firefox also doesn’t pass the test, and Opera 9 barely passes it.
What do I think? I think a good web page designer can create a site that uses standard CSS, XHTML, and JavaScript and have it work with IE7, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and even other more esoteric browsers. I think the NewsCloud site is overdeveloped and too busy. I’m not a designer, but as a web page reader for 15 years, it gives me a headache. It also gives the W3C XHTML validator a headache with 307 errors! I’m surprised the page developer’s Firefox isn’t lying down and whimpering with that count.
As for browser-specific extensions and non-standard uses of technology, we don’t have to look any further than Firefox’s support for JavaScript 1.7 in Firefox 2.0b to see rather significant examples of both. There is no ECMAScript standard to support these. How is it, then, that this innovation is considered good while Microsoft’s innovation (which, I want to remind the more histrionic among you, helped bring about today’s implementation of Ajax) is considered bad?
IE is not my favorite browser. I do have to do extra work to ensure my pages work with it. However, it’s a vast improvement over IE 6, and as long as the changes continue in the positive direction, I will be encouraged. Guardedly encouraged, but encouraged nonetheless.
I think putting up a banner screaming at your customers to change their browser is a case of ‘been there, done that’ back from the old Netscape/IE flag days. Anyone can code a page to work with Firefox–it takes skill to make the page work with all the browsers and still validate.
I also think that if someone wants to put up banners and force people into one browser or another, more power to them, and more jobs for me. I may not be a designer, but at least I know how to create sites that validate.
Update
The author of the post quotes a year old column by Paul Thurrott, noted Microsoft writer. What he fails to quote, is Thurrott’s follow up post.