Microsoft IE and antitrust

mr skillsmr skills
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
I've been told on this forum that when websites don't work on Safari/Firefox, it's usually because of Microsoft using non-standard formats in Internet Explorer - thus, when people make their site just for the market leader, sometimes it doesn't work on other browsers.



Now, this seems like Microsoft dominating its market position to make itself the Standard and keep everyone else out of the loop. Could those more knowledgable tell me:



1) Am I correct in making this accusation?

2) How does this sit with the whole antitrust thing?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 2
    onyx-pbonyx-pb Posts: 26member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Mr Skills

    I've been told on this forum that when websites don't work on Safari/Firefox, it's usually because of Microsoft using non-standard formats in Internet Explorer - thus, when people make their site just for the market leader, sometimes it doesn't work on other browsers.





    I'm prepared to give M$ the benefit of the doubt here: Some of their 'non-standardness' was down to there not being a standard at the time they chose to implement a feature. Where I can fault them is the length of time it has taken them to incorperate these standards once they came about (DOM, CSS2 etc).



    Another point about some standards is that they are open to interpretation (i.e. widths expressed as a % - do they mean % of total browsers space or % of total space after any fixed dimentions have been taken into account?). NetScape chose one way, M$ went the other - who's right?



    As for writing for IE only... in my opinion it's either down to lazyness (I can't be bothered), ignorance (There are other browsers? really?) or Money! It takes a little more time and effort to write cross-browser compatible sites plus you have to test everything TWICE, for some companies this is just too much.



    For my latest site the customer (uk schools) are saying "Code it for IE and if it happens to work in FireFox..." This is way better than I usually get so things are changing.
  • Reply 2 of 2
    xoolxool Posts: 2,460member
    As a web programmer I can attest to IE's non-standard behaviors. Usually we code to (mostly) standards compliant browsers and then deal with platform and browser specific inconsistencies.



    If MS wrote some custom extensions while standards were evolving it would be one thing, but instead they just hijack things and then neglect them. Now its a thorn in everyone's side while MS wins due to lock-in.





    Edit: spelling
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