Microsoft and Web Standards
2008-03-18
Posted by: badanov
Hat tip to Little Green Footballs
Last fall I ran smack hard into Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 and what standards mean to them when one of the wargame club members couldn't access some nice drop down menus created using xhtml. So, I was forced to bring up a subdomain with pure html just for IE 7+ users. A few months later when I had to update the web pages I realized what a PITA it would be to update two websites, so I switched it all back to html/xhtml without all the pretty hacks that made a website work well.
Since then, to my other web customers, it has been selling only html/xhtml; no hacks, no flash and nothing with javascript. xhtml allows developers and designers to design an eye-appealing website without a lot of non-standard stuff. You don't want to run into a wall as I did with Microsoft.
Last year one of my customers insisted on loading their website with tons o'flash, and I begged not to use flash because of the third party private thing and because flash loaded websites have known security problems.
I wound up losing that customer to a 20 year old selling flash and a new set of web skills only a 20 year old could claim.
It turns out that it will be Internet Explorer and web standards which will make their website useless and thus look terrible, so the irony is thick here.
And the lesson for Microsoft, assuming they learn their lesson, is that standards rule and when you don't think they should apply to you, they eventually will.
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