If you skim my blog it’s pretty clear that I am an ardent supporter of Mozilla, web standards, the open web, and specifically the Firefox web browser. This blog post is about defending Mozilla, and I think it’s important that I do. Tim Sneath doesn’t understand the greater picture here. He’s viewing the web through Microsoft’s eyes…
On February 10th, a blog post showed up on the MSDN IE Blog regarding the IE9 release candidate and web standards. In the first paragraph the post states, “reflects our unique approach to building the best experience of the Web on Windows.” With that short statement it’s clear that Microsoft is saying two things about IE9: 1) it is a different type of web browser (unique) and 2) it is the Microsoft’s view of the web on Windows.
So I want to dive right in here and say something painfully obvious. Internet Explorer is a Windows-only product. Right away you know that it is only available on Windows and for all we know it always will be. You can’t use IE on OS X and you can’t use it on Linux. Microsoft expects users who would want to use IE, you use it on Windows. To get their unique approach to the web, to get the IE9 web, you have to use Windows Vista or Windows 7. The latter being the only usable version of the OS. Windows users will *not* be able to use IE9 on Windows XP.
The XP debate is interesting and there’s a lot to it. In my opinion, Microsoft should be supporting an OS that they still support in other ways. What they are saying here is that if you use Windows XP, you should either pay them to upgrade to the latest version or you only get an old version of their web browser. Obviously the Internet as a whole would benefit greatly if Windows XP was deprecated and every single Windows user was on Windows 7. But that is not the world that we live in. For various reasons businesses and home users still use Windows XP. Therefore, it’s simply appalling that Microsoft is leaving them out in the cold by refusing to support the aging OS completely.
Will Mozilla and Google support Windows XP users forever? No. But right now they do. They support Windows XP users more than Microsoft does. And that says something.
The next section of the blog post talks about how IE9 has improved their performance and support for web standards greatly. They even have a nice little graph for you. It’s misleading, but there you go. They want you to see how awesome IE9 is (in their view) with regards to web standards.
I want to jump right in here too. Microsoft has a very specific and predictable view of web standards. They don’t view web standards as a system to move the web forward, they view them as a rigid set of rules that once finalized should be cautiously and carefully, lightly, softly, gently migrated to a web browser. Microsoft’s unique view is that web standards are nothing until they are “done”. Once the W3C finalizes a particular set of web standards, then and only then is it appropriate to integrate them into the product.
You can see this ridiculous approach in Tim Sneath’s defense of Microsoft and web standards over here. In his post, Sneath is defending the company he works for from a blog post by a Mozilla employee, Paul Rouget. In his post from February 15th, Rouget states that in his view, IE9 is most definitely *not* a modern web browser. He also happens to go to pretty great lengths to prove it.
Rouget talks about how in a more objective sense, in a more universal sense, Microsoft’s latest incarnation of IE is not a modern web browser. When web developers talk about a modern browser, they usually refer to either Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, or Safari. Why? Because these browsers, in their own unique ways, have a completely different view of web standards.
Mozilla and Google believe that web standards are something that allow for the construction of powerful, innovative, and sometimes absolutely amazing web sites or web applications. In order for creative human beings to channel this creativity, they want to have access to web browsers that give them all of the tools available to do so. The web standards that are built into Firefox 4 and Google Chrome are not yet complete, not yet baked, not yet finished by the W3C. Microsoft sees this as something to be afraid of. Mozilla and Google see this as something to embrace and integrate, in order to learn, in order to give users the best tools, in order to provide web developers with the everything they might want in order to create.
Web browsers need to test web standards to find out what works and what doesn’t. To work the kinks out. To find out what web developers want to use. Microsoft sees this as something scary. Mozilla and Google view bleeding edge web standards as the modern web. The kind of tools that propel the web forward. What is the theme here? It is what the theme has always been. Microsoft is *not* innovative. They play it safe, and they take a long time to do anything of value. Mozilla and Google look to the future and take risks. Risks that they feel are necessary in order to determine what the future of the web will look like.
Does all of this “safe” talk mean that Microsoft’s IE is a more stable browser? No. It just means that when IE9 comes out it’s going to include the web standards and enhancements that Microsoft feels are “ready” for today. When Mozilla releases Firefox 4 it’s going to mean that you’re using a web browser for today and tomorrow.
I’m biased. I’ll admit it. I think Mozilla is an extremely important company. They shocked Microsoft into consciousness when they started the Firefox project and ever since then, IE’s market share has been dropping. Users wanted a faster, more powerful, more robust web browser and Mozilla delivered. Today, Mozilla is not only a defender of the Firefox web browser, they are defenders of the open web. While Firefox is the biggest and best tool they have to describe that view of the web, Mozilla means more than just Firefox. The organization works tirelessly, day and night to propel the web forward and describe how the web of the future might look.
They’re also about the people, the community, the users. Microsoft is about business. Microsoft is about a unique approach to a Windows-centric web browser.
You can come from the Microsoft camp and talk about how great IE9 is. You can use IE9 and talk about how much better it is than all other versions of IE. Honestly, I’m glad that Microsoft worked so hard at integrating web standards into IE. It’s about bloody time. But at the end of the day, Microsoft doesn’t care, and can’t claim to care about web standards. They only care about Windows Vista/7 users who want to use today’s web standards in today’s Windows Internet Explorer.
If you want to explore the beauty of the web on Windows, have fun.
If you want to explore the universe of the web today and tomorrow. Get a real web browser.
