Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

james,

I perfectly understand web designers who are upset by Microsoft's policy of designing their own standards. But I remember a time when Netscape used to do the same.

Microsoft does not own the Web is the same as saying W3C does not own the market. While I accept that having a standard is important, a standard dictated by the market is far more valuable than anything a "standards body" designs. For example, TCP/IP just works, and it does so beautifully, although nobody bothered to design it according to the OSI standard/model.

It is a fact of life that companies respect standards only in a very fragmented market, while monopolies like to impose their own proprietary systems (see iTunes). Complaining about it does not change a thing. Either accept the fact, or design your pages according to W3C standards, even if they break under IE. When enough people will do the latter, IE will change. Until then, I see very little incentive for MS to invest in this (except for the rising of Firefox, which will probably stop after IE 7 and Vista).

By the way, in this "dispute", I am on the web designers side. But just complaining about it is futile. Do something!