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Opera, the company making what is arguable the most standards-compliant (and least used) internet browser has filed suit in the EU against Microsoft arguing that it should be forced to make it’s browser render pages correctly. While there is certainly an aspect to this suit of Opera wanting to draw attention to it’s own browser, it is absolutely fair to say that Microsoft has done a terrible job supporting standards which would allow developers (that’s us) to build websites much more easily that look the same to all users (that’s us too) in all browsers.

Sure, the newest version (IE7) is leaps and bounds ahead of IE6, but it still lags seriously behind Firefox, Safari, and Opera in terms of reliability in rendering web pages. And though we do strive to make our sites work in all browsers, there is an inordinate amount of time spent tweaking things to work in IE. When we are forced to code outside of the standards, pages become heavier, less accessible, and often suffer reagrding Search Engine Optimization.

It would be unfair to say that all the other browsers work great and render the same right off the bat when I code a page (Safari still gives me the heebie-jeebies from time to time), but Microsoft has a log way to go in this respect.

In other respects, however, IE is great. I do use both, but tend to stick with Firefox due to its superior support for standard HTML and CSS, as well as the incredibly useful extensions that I rely on for building pages. For the average use I can see how using IE would be a no-brainer - since it comes installed on any Windows PC you buy - and that’s the gist of Opera’s suit:

Opera wants the EC to take two actions against Microsoft in response to the complaint. The first is fairly predictable: force Microsoft to either unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows or to have alternative browsers preinstalled on the desktop. The idea, of course, is that Opera would be one of those alternative browsers.

The second recommended remedy is a bit more subtle, but is also ultimately aimed at increasing Opera’s market share. Opera wants the EC to force Microsoft to follow “fundamental and open” standards for how browsers render pages. Although version 7 has improved the situation somewhat, Internet Explorer still significantly lags behind Opera, Firefox, and Safari when it comes to standards compliance (although no browser is 100 percent compliant). Since it’s still the dominant web browser with over 80 percent of the worldwide market, web developers are forced to make sure their sites render properly on IE, often to the detriment of standards compliance.

Full Ars Technica article

This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 12:10 pm and is filed under Tech, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.