Microsoft is a massive company - seventy-six thousand employees in 102 countries - and I have no doubt the folks there are exceptionally smart, genuinely nice people. But people are suggesting the Redmond beast is dead, or rather irrelevant, today. To be totally honest, whilst Microsoft is by no means dead, it's a company that's becoming more and more irrelevant. Even Yahoo, whilst making losses, is relevant - Pipes and Flickr are slick innovative homegrown and purchased produce. Google too is pushing technologies - Spreadsheets and Documents (also a mixture of purchased and home-grown technologies). Microsoft are playing catchup in numerous arenas - web standards, digital audio and games consoles - and whilst that's not disastrous (Office is still dominating, as is Windows, and Microsoft are hardly losing money overall), the three are perhaps the most pertinent topics at the moment: Firefox is gaining market-share at the expense of the lacklustre Microsoft Internet Explorer; Apple's iPod+iTunes is killing Zune and many other players through sheer market penetration, marketing and ease of use; and despite pouring bucket-loads of the Microsoft war-chest into Xbox and others in the Home and Entertainment division's product portfolio, it's been a year where Nintendo has dominated with a genuinely innovative console. But before I regurgitate my reasons for generally thinking that Microsoft is a headless chicken, onto Internet Explorer - a piece of software that, contrary to the fact that its use is widespread, is loathed by web developers building standards-based web pages.

Internet Explorer is loathed is because it epitomises Microsoft's attempts to dominate the internet in the late nineties, by completely obliterating open web standards and ensure competing browsers went the way of the dodo. As web designers, we hate IE because it pushes a monopolistic corporations agenda that's no where near as relevant as it once was. People may counter this rant on Internet Explorer with the 'But Firefox and Safari etc are not absolutely completely 100% standards compliant' chant. And yes, it's worth noting this before people think I'm living the illusion that all non-IE browsers are fully compliant (comparison here), I'm well aware of that - my point is that comparatively, IE is not standards compliant. Many of you will be familiar with the Acid2 browser test - if not, then try it here and read up on it over at webstandards.org. Safari is, if memory serves me correctly, the first browser to fully support the test - and whilst it's certainly not the be-all and end-all standards test, it certainly gives us a clear idea of what each browser supports in relation to what developers are using to design and style their pages. Internet Explorer has issues.

The history of Trident (the rendering engine behind Internet Explorer) is an amusing read. Worthy of mention are the facts that Tasman (the IE for Mac engine) was actually more standards compliant than the windows-only Trident (presumably at the time of its release) and that the latest Office 2007 HTML edit & rendering engine is unsurprisingly worse at standards support. It also talks about Microsoft's Expression Web product - which claims to have 'the most accurate rendering engine available today'. That's great, Microsoft, it really is. But it really ought to be shipped and forcibly installed on Windows systems for Internet Explorer's rendering around the world before it actually means jack-sh@t - although I must admit I'm intrigued by this claim and part of me wants to see for myself what it's like. Too bad it's Windows only, and I lack (for the time being) Parallels!

People have asked me whether I believe Microsoft should just simply stop IE development and aid Mozilla and WebKit development, and whilst the 'mac-based web developer cliché' makes me pray for that, my ultimate reaction is 'no'. Competition is healthy - it keeps companies hopefully wanting to make better, ever more innovative products - just as the Zune is some sort of competition for the iPod, and Xbox 360 is for the Wii. All I want is for IE6 to die a short, and highly painful death. If you are a Windows user who has chosen not to install IE7 - please, please, please do so. Whilst IE7 may not be Firefox, it's a huge improvement over IE6 - standards support is better, some transparent image support, and, finally, tabs - although the UI is somewhat confused and certainly a departure from IE6. Whilst you may not think it matters, your choice of browser does. It makes peoples lives less stress free and allows designers and developers to spend time doing what they want with a project, not trying to fix the inadequacies of a comparatively out-dated browser.

Tags: RapidWeaver, Internet Explorer, Rant