Web Devout tidings

If you’re interested in some more of my technology-related writings, I’ve recently been posting on Tech Center Current, the blog for the California Community Colleges Technology Center where I currently work. Most of the posts are less advanced and less industry-centric than I typically make here, and posts are divided into three different levels of technical familiarity, so it reaches to a wider audience. Although I may be going to work for either Microsoft or Mozilla in the near future, I’ll act as an invited expert on the Tech Center Current blog for a while after.

This week, I was approached with job opportunities from both Mozilla and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team. It turns out this is a tougher decision than I thought it would be.

Anyone who knows me knows what I think of Internet Explorer. Let me briefly summarize what, in my mind, are the two biggest problems with Internet Explorer as a product and what I feel are the primary sources for those problems:

First in my mind is standards support. Internet Explorer has by far the worst standards support of any major web browser, period. Anyone serious in web development knows this. Over time, Microsoft has been accused of things like not caring about standards and what have you. But I don’t think that’s really the core issue. I honestly believe that the IE developers fully intend to follow standards whenever they’re available. IE’s nonstandard event model wasn’t the result of deliberately deviating from the standard; there was no event model standard when IE added support. A lot of the so-called “nonstandard behavior” with CSS properties is the result of bugs and design flaws that the IE developers intend to fix. The main problem isn’t that they don’t care.

What I believe is the primary cause of IE’s currently miserable situation with standards support is the fact that Microsoft disbanded the platform development team back in 2001, and thus, aside from security updates, IE layout engine development was completely abandoned for five years. Five years. Half a decade. Roughly half of Internet Explorer’s entire life to date was spent sitting idle. IE 6 wasn’t a bad browser when it first came out, but other browsers have now had twice the time IE had to add standards support, fix bugs, and generally snazz up their engines. Internet Explorer was simply neglected for too long.

The second main problem with Internet Explorer as a product is its security record. Every piece of software as complex as a web browser will have plenty of security problems. And naturally, if you have 80% or higher market share, there will be lots of people trying to pick apart your browser piece by piece. But this isn’t the main problem.

The main problem with IE’s security is the security response process. Internet Explorer simply takes too long to fix its vulnerabilities, and it leaves so many vulnerabilities unfixed. Internet Explorer has taken on average several times as long as Firefox to patch its known vulnerabilities. We just passed the fourth Patch Tuesday of the year, yet according to Secunia, 78% of IE 7’s known vulnerabilities are still unfixed. That isn’t even counting the several-year-old IE 6 vulnerabilities that were never fixed and probably still exist in IE 7. Microsoft says that this is all due to their quality assurance process, but I dunno… I’ve heard about as many cases of IE patch problems as Firefox patch problems. Too many issues are swept under the rug. It’s another case of neglect.

So here I am with an opportunity to help do something about this. I have a chance to help give IE attention where it needs it. Internet Explorer is used by around 75% to 80% of the Internet population. It is, in many or most cases, the single immediate factor holding back professional web developers from doing their jobs as quickly, correctly, and efficiently as they otherwise could.

Meanwhile, I may also have the opportunity to work for Mozilla. Mozilla is an entirely different situation. They have this groundwork laid out. They have an engine that is relatively very well in line with the standards. I have little doubt that the Gecko engine code is much more consistent, well-structured, and mature than the Trident code in Internet Explorer. Mozilla isn’t struggling to correct lots of broken foundation; it’s working to perfect its well-written engine and to develop the new groundwork for future standards.

Working with Internet Explorer would be working to bring a dated but important engine into the present, while working with Mozilla would be working to lead a modern but not-quite-as-prominent engine into the future. Both are very important tasks and both are tasks which I would much like to be a part of. But alas, there is only one of me, and I have to make a choice. I feel like I would better enjoy the work and atmosphere at Mozilla, but I might be able to drive a bigger near-future impact on the Web by working with Internet Explorer. If, in the end, both options are available to me, what should I do?

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, has been fighting for the idea of net neutrality, which he describes as the principle that “[i]f I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level.”

He has made two blog posts on the subject:

1. Neutrality of the Net
2. Net Neutrality: This is serious

The issue of net neutrality in the United States has largely turned into a partisan issue, with Democrats generally backing the idea and Republicans generally opposing it. Predictably, web service providers such as Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft have supported the idea while telecommunications companies have opposed it, effectively arguing that they are due additional earnings from websites that profit on their infastructure rather than getting a “free ride”, despite already paying the often higher bandwidth costs.

The absense of net neutrality legislation may allow for telecommunications companies to manipulate the transfer speed for websites because they haven’t paid a new additional fee, because they are considered a threat to the respective telecommunications company’s business model (for example, if the company has interests in a certain video purchasing site, it may forcefully reduce the performance of competing websites), or for other arbitrary reasons. Supporters of net neutrality argue that the absense of proper legislation would create a two-tiered Internet that would compromise freedom and innovation on the Web.

The Web Standards Project (WaSP) website has undergone a major redesign. This reflects the new energy that has been pumped into the project since web browser development began to accelerate in the last year or so. The WaSP group has been working closely with the Internet Explorer development team to push for improved standards support in Internet Explorer 7 and future versions, with notable success. The new website also features a comment system and trackback support.

Google has come under fire regarding its recent move to set up a server in China. While many see this action as bowing down to a tyrant, I for one applaud their decision.

Here is the current situation: Chinese residents more or less have access to the Google.com server, completely unfiltered by Google. However, Chinese ISPs have been creating complications, and the availability of Google.com to Chinese citizens is unreliable due to factors outside Google’s control. Google could only work around these problems by providing a server on Chinese soil. As a result, this server would be subject to all of the local laws of the land, including the self-censorship laws.

So Google basically has two options: either continue to provide Chinese residents with an unfiltered but unreliable service, or provide a reliable service that makes as much information available to the Chinese residents as it can by law and notifies the user whenever something has been filtered, all while still making the completely unfiltered Google.com service available as before.

The question ultimately comes down to whether Google should maximize the information it makes available to the Chinese residents or hold out on them due to principle. As Google has relatively little influence in China (compared to most of the free world), a boycott of China would have little or no effect. It seems to me that the action that most benefits the people of China is to provide them with as much service as Google can, which unfortunately is not perfect.

Change in China will not likely happen due to boycotts, but by the people of China learning what it means to be free. The more exposure the Chinese citizens gets to the Internet, the more pressure it will put on the ruling party to let go of their stranglehold on the people. Google is trying to give as much information to those people as they can, and will no doubt push further as their influence grows. This decision is not hypocrisy; rather, it is more in line with their promise than perhaps anything they have done before: to make all the world’s information universally accessible. The Chinese government has been fighting to keep Google from doing this, and Google is now fighting back.

Edit: It is worth noting that Google has promised to not keep on Chinese soil any information which could be used to incriminate users under Chinese law.

Edit: Here is a nicely-written article on this subject: Google founders grow up — just like the rest of us.