Loisintheforest commended me on my restraint at only calling Microsoft “cheeky buggers” in my last post. This is because I think MS have a legitimate case for building non-standard products. If they have an idea they consider to be better than the standard, they are ideally placed to simply implement and roll out their software and, hey presto, it’s the defacto standard. For example, if I want to write a bit of Javascript to move a paragraph 10 pixels to the left, this is how I do it by the standards:
document.getElementById("myelement").style.left= ((substr(0,document.defaultView.getComputedStyle(document.getElementById("myelement"), "").getPropertyValue("height").length-2) + 10) + 'px';
Whereas in Internet explorer I would go:
document['myelement'].pixelLeft -= 10;
Are you starting to see it Microsoft’s way? (Note: neither of these is tested, but for the purposes of illustration they are close enough) .
You’re Microsoft. 80% of the world browses the web with your browser, which admittedly is a bit shonky, but it had to be out there on time and fit with dozens of different teams’ technical and strategic goals. Your customer service, marketing, business relations, product sales, internal procedures and development projects are all supported by internet technologies including browser scripting. Then some bunch of academics start declaring standards, working with no deadline and no financial risk if they get it wrong. Are you going to rip out all your infrastructure and threaten the stability of a world-dominating piece of technology in order to play by their rules? Or are you going to continue to play by your rules… I know what I’d do.