New IE Mobile Based on IE 6? REALLY???
- by Chad Weaver on December 22, 2008 8:57 AM
If you have done any web development in, I dunno the last 5-6 years, you understand how terrible IE6 is. Frankly I'm tired of having a separate stylesheet just for the IE6 browser and its terrible box model not to mention complete lack of PNG alpha layer support.
As a community, web developers hated on Microsoft for their subpar browser and its complete lack of standards compliance. Even when they formally annonced that the browser was not up to snuff key areas - the web developer community immediately responded in angst "Really, it took you guys that long to finally figure it out?".
On to IE7, most of us were placated by the changes the IE team made. Namely fixing the box model that was so broken in IE6, and as I write this we are FINALLY seeing the numbers of IE6 users dwindle to a respectably low number. Apple and basecamp made news this part year in announcing that they are no longer support IE6 on their sites altogether. Definetely a sign of the times...
So imagine my concern and ,well, shock when I read today that the newest version of the mobile IE browser, ironically named Internet Explorer Mobile 6, will be based on no other than IE6 (the desktop variant). Ugh, REALLY Microsoft?
So good news and bad news here:
THE GOOD
- Full HTML Rendering
- Native Flash Support (take that Apple)
- AJAX support and Jscript 5.7 (features from IE8 - yet to be released)
- Ability to switch between mobile versions of a website and the normal version (very innovative...)
THE BAD
- You have to buy a WinMo device to use it :p
THE UGLY
- Technically you are using IE6 (I just threw up in my mouth a little bit)
You can read more about this over at PC WORLD.
Also be sure to Check out Bruce Lawson's blog post on MIE6 and standards compliance. It seems it doesn't fair too well, go figure...
I can't effing believe that MSFT is using the IE6 base for this. Wasn't IE6 the reason that Firefox gained so much ground initially???