Comments on: Microsoft continues their self-destructive campaigns http://www.webdevout.net/tidings/2009/06/23/microsoft-continues-their-self-destructive-campaigns/ Updates on the march of progress. A weblog about web design, standards, web browsers, and the overall health of the Web. Wed, 14 Dec 2011 14:45:24 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Magne Andersson http://www.webdevout.net/tidings/2009/06/23/microsoft-continues-their-self-destructive-campaigns/comment-page-1/#comment-4185 Magne Andersson Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:20:36 +0000 http://www.webdevout.net/tidings/2009/06/23/microsoft-continues-their-self-destructive-campaigns/#comment-4185 You know, this list was even worse when it first was published. IE had all the checkmarks while there were only two ties. I read from one person on Twitter that he, through some help from a few friends at Microsoft got it cleaned up a bit, and making it a bit more fair. But the first version (yes, I saw it) was horrible. In this version the comments is modified too, the old ones were even more unfair to the other browsers. You know, this list was even worse when it first was published. IE had all the checkmarks while there were only two ties. I read from one person on Twitter that he, through some help from a few friends at Microsoft got it cleaned up a bit, and making it a bit more fair. But the first version (yes, I saw it) was horrible. In this version the comments is modified too, the old ones were even more unfair to the other browsers.

Posted using SeaMonkey/Mozilla Suite 20090531 on Windows.

]]> By: David Hammond http://www.webdevout.net/tidings/2009/06/23/microsoft-continues-their-self-destructive-campaigns/comment-page-1/#comment-4184 David Hammond Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:03:48 +0000 http://www.webdevout.net/tidings/2009/06/23/microsoft-continues-their-self-destructive-campaigns/#comment-4184 Gérard: In retrospect, I probably should have approached that point the way I concluded the Customizability point. Of course there are large differences between browsers, and IE still stands apart from the crowd as having the worst overall standards support by a sizable margin. They were at least forthcoming about their inferior implementation of newer specifications, as I noted, although they still lag in various other web standards as you noted. I agree that what this comes down to is that this black-and-white check-or-no-check system is misleading, no matter where you draw the lines. If I had to use a black-and-white system, I'd be much more forgiving about feature differences than Microsoft was on the points that they believed favored them. I wouldn't say that IE 8 *doesn't support web standards*. All things considered, it's actually pretty good at supporting web standards. The other browsers are generally better. Gérard: In retrospect, I probably should have approached that point the way I concluded the Customizability point. Of course there are large differences between browsers, and IE still stands apart from the crowd as having the worst overall standards support by a sizable margin. They were at least forthcoming about their inferior implementation of newer specifications, as I noted, although they still lag in various other web standards as you noted.

I agree that what this comes down to is that this black-and-white check-or-no-check system is misleading, no matter where you draw the lines. If I had to use a black-and-white system, I’d be much more forgiving about feature differences than Microsoft was on the points that they believed favored them. I wouldn’t say that IE 8 *doesn’t support web standards*. All things considered, it’s actually pretty good at supporting web standards. The other browsers are generally better.

Posted using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.11 on Linux.

]]> By: Gérard Talbot http://www.webdevout.net/tidings/2009/06/23/microsoft-continues-their-self-destructive-campaigns/comment-page-1/#comment-4183 Gérard Talbot Thu, 25 Jun 2009 01:17:22 +0000 http://www.webdevout.net/tidings/2009/06/23/microsoft-continues-their-self-destructive-campaigns/#comment-4183 <blockquote> Web Standards Yes for all three. Considering we’re talking about a simple yes-or-no rating system here, I’d say that’s fair. </blockquote> David Hammond, I'd say you are making a very bold statement here. Let's try to discuss it in a structured manner... Are you saying that UAAG 1.0, HTML 4, DOM 1 Core, DOM 2 Core, DOM 2 Events and ECMAScript-10262 3rd editions are not web standards? or that the above specifications of techical recommendations shouldn't be considered accepted and confirmed web standards by web browser manufacturers? <a href="www.w3.org/DOM/Test/#releases">DOM 1 Core results</a>: Internet Explorer 8 67.6 % 161 tests passed out of 238 tests Firefox 3.0.9 93.7 % 223 tests passed out of 238 tests Opera 9.64 89.1 % 212 tests passed out of 238 tests Am I missing something here? DOM 2 Events: Internet Explorer 8 scores 0. 0 support. 0 compliance. Am I exaggerating here? If png file type is now correctly supported in IE 8, then why can't I use a png image file as favicon/webpage icon? Why do I must use an .ico file to identify my favicon/webpage icon? .. like this <a href="http://www.w3.org/2005/10/howto-favicon">W3C QA "How to Add a Favicon to your Site" tutorial explains/recommends</a> ... <a href="https://connect.microsoft.com/IE/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=364028" title="External stylesheet not labeled text/css must be ignored">Bug 364028 at connect's IE beta feedback</a> has been closed and has not been reactivated. Is that ok with you? Regarding ECMAScript-10262 3rd edition: are you actually claiming that IE 8's implementation of JScript is compliant with the spec? Have you ever read a document titled <a href="http://wiki.ecmascript.org/lib/exe/fetch.php?id=resources:resources&cache=cache&media=resources:jscriptdeviationsfromes3.pdf">JScript Deviations from ES3</a>? Have you ever read this <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/jscript/archive/2007/10/29/ecmascript-3-and-beyond.aspx#5776781">post from Garrett Smith regarding JScript</a>? Even if we consider only and exclusively CSS 2.1, there are people (<a href="http://idreamincode.co.uk/ie8-bugs" title="Coding & Dreaming's IE 8 bugs list">James Hopkins</a> and me and possibly others) who believe IE 8 has a good bunch of implementation CSS 2.1 bugs that other browsers (Firefox 3, Opera 9.6, Safari 4, Konqueror 4) do not have. Regarding web standards, security, accessibility, customizability, etc..., each and all of such topics can not be resolved or assessed with a blunt yes or no. regards, Gérard

Web Standards
Yes for all three. Considering we’re talking about a simple yes-or-no rating system here, I’d say that’s fair.

David Hammond,

I’d say you are making a very bold statement here. Let’s try to discuss it in a structured manner…

Are you saying that UAAG 1.0, HTML 4, DOM 1 Core, DOM 2 Core, DOM 2 Events and ECMAScript-10262 3rd editions are not web standards? or that the above specifications of techical recommendations shouldn’t be considered accepted and confirmed web standards by web browser manufacturers?

DOM 1 Core results:
Internet Explorer 8 67.6 % 161 tests passed out of 238 tests
Firefox 3.0.9 93.7 % 223 tests passed out of 238 tests
Opera 9.64 89.1 % 212 tests passed out of 238 tests
Am I missing something here?

DOM 2 Events: Internet Explorer 8 scores 0. 0 support. 0 compliance. Am I exaggerating here?

If png file type is now correctly supported in IE 8, then why can’t I use a png image file as favicon/webpage icon? Why do I must use an .ico file to identify my favicon/webpage icon? .. like this W3C QA “How to Add a Favicon to your Site” tutorial explains/recommends …

Bug 364028 at connect’s IE beta feedback has been closed and has not been reactivated. Is that ok with you?

Regarding ECMAScript-10262 3rd edition: are you actually claiming that IE 8’s implementation of JScript is compliant with the spec? Have you ever read a document titled JScript Deviations from ES3? Have you ever read this post from Garrett Smith regarding JScript?

Even if we consider only and exclusively CSS 2.1, there are people (James Hopkins and me and possibly others) who believe IE 8 has a good bunch of implementation CSS 2.1 bugs that other browsers (Firefox 3, Opera 9.6, Safari 4, Konqueror 4) do not have.

Regarding web standards, security, accessibility, customizability, etc…, each and all of such topics can not be resolved or assessed with a blunt yes or no.

regards, Gérard

Posted using Konqueror 4.2.4 on Linux.

]]> By: David Hammond http://www.webdevout.net/tidings/2009/06/23/microsoft-continues-their-self-destructive-campaigns/comment-page-1/#comment-4182 David Hammond Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:44:00 +0000 http://www.webdevout.net/tidings/2009/06/23/microsoft-continues-their-self-destructive-campaigns/#comment-4182 Tomasz: As usual, it depends on what exactly you're doing. I was working on a JavaScript-based game engine (a scrolling overhead-view RPG thing like classic Final Fantasy games), and Chrome and Opera totally kicked Firefox's butt on that. In that case, I had a large table of cells that had positioned background images, overlaid with a few small absolutely positioned blocks that also had positioned background images. The scrolling mechanism would generate a new row or column of tiles in the off-view buffer, then position the whole enchilada a couple of pixels at a time until it had scrolled a full tile, and then remove the newly off-view row or column. The row/column generation and removal took a negligible amount of time, and I verified that the bottleneck was in fact the browser's performance in handling the incremental positioning. Chrome and Opera were smooth as silk, with no significant speed difference when the view was scrolling versus when it wasn't. In Firefox, everything slowed down to about 80% the normal speed while scrolling. IE 8 slowed down to about 50% the normal speed while scrolling. I tried a variety of different approaches, including the canvas element (which was the absolute slowest approach I tried, by the way). In each approach I tried, Chrome was at least a little faster than Firefox, and Opera was usually the fastest or tied with Chrome. IE was always out of the game. So, while I can verify that Firefox on Windows renders World of Merix a bit faster than Chrome (on Linux, Firefox is slower, possibly due to the same regression that initially made Mozilla's Bespin unusably slow on Linux), it's hard to look at any one test case and call it a conclusive assessment of the browser's relative drawing performance. Tomasz: As usual, it depends on what exactly you’re doing. I was working on a JavaScript-based game engine (a scrolling overhead-view RPG thing like classic Final Fantasy games), and Chrome and Opera totally kicked Firefox’s butt on that.

In that case, I had a large table of cells that had positioned background images, overlaid with a few small absolutely positioned blocks that also had positioned background images. The scrolling mechanism would generate a new row or column of tiles in the off-view buffer, then position the whole enchilada a couple of pixels at a time until it had scrolled a full tile, and then remove the newly off-view row or column. The row/column generation and removal took a negligible amount of time, and I verified that the bottleneck was in fact the browser’s performance in handling the incremental positioning.

Chrome and Opera were smooth as silk, with no significant speed difference when the view was scrolling versus when it wasn’t. In Firefox, everything slowed down to about 80% the normal speed while scrolling. IE 8 slowed down to about 50% the normal speed while scrolling.

I tried a variety of different approaches, including the canvas element (which was the absolute slowest approach I tried, by the way). In each approach I tried, Chrome was at least a little faster than Firefox, and Opera was usually the fastest or tied with Chrome. IE was always out of the game.

So, while I can verify that Firefox on Windows renders World of Merix a bit faster than Chrome (on Linux, Firefox is slower, possibly due to the same regression that initially made Mozilla’s Bespin unusably slow on Linux), it’s hard to look at any one test case and call it a conclusive assessment of the browser’s relative drawing performance.

Posted using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.11 on Linux.

]]> By: Tomasz Grajewski http://www.webdevout.net/tidings/2009/06/23/microsoft-continues-their-self-destructive-campaigns/comment-page-1/#comment-4181 Tomasz Grajewski Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:43:26 +0000 http://www.webdevout.net/tidings/2009/06/23/microsoft-continues-their-self-destructive-campaigns/#comment-4181 <blockquote>"I can definitely notice that Chrome is faster than Firefox at most drawing operations."</blockquote> I wouldn't say, that Chrome is faster than Firefox in drawing operations. It's slower, at least on this graphics heavy page: <a href="http://www.worldofmerix.com/">World of Merix</a>. And Firefox isn't so fast either, as it renders mentioned page slower than Opera... Of course IE is still far behind, and its increase of rendering performance is neglible or none (if it really is an increase, as in case of IE8 it's rather decrease).

“I can definitely notice that Chrome is faster than Firefox at most drawing operations.”

I wouldn’t say, that Chrome is faster than Firefox in drawing operations. It’s slower, at least on this graphics heavy page: World of Merix. And Firefox isn’t so fast either, as it renders mentioned page slower than Opera… Of course IE is still far behind, and its increase of rendering performance is neglible or none (if it really is an increase, as in case of IE8 it’s rather decrease).

Posted using Opera 9.64 on Windows.

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