Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley posts Microsoft’s CSS Plans for IE 7 Draw Cheers, Jeers. “Although it won’t fix most of its CSS-related bugs until Beta 2, Microsoft is going public with what it expects to deliver, standards-wise, by the time Internet Explorer 7.0 ships. Acid2 test compliance isn’t on the short list.”
It’s great to hear that IE 7 will attempt closer compliance with the standards. It means that those of us who surf with Safari, Konqueror, FireFox, Opera, Camino or other browsers will have a better chance of getting web pages that look right and work right. Microsoft won’t promise 100% standards compliance; it’s unlikely there is any browser that means that lofty goal. It’s not even clear that experts agree on what 100% compliance is.
Seeing behavior from Microsoft that looks a lot like standards compliance raises hopes. Perhaps Microsoft can grow to assume the responsibilities it should shoulder as the industry leader and stop trying to monopolize markets with “Embrace-Enhance-Extend-Extinguish” tactics. Or perhaps I’m just a hopeless optimist…