First, he embraced interoperability between software from Microsoft and that from other vendors. Then he announced that a new version of Microsoft's Web browser -- Internet Explorer 7 -- is coming.
Does this mean IE 7 will be interoperable with other browsers? Does it mean IE 7 will take Web standards seriously?
Don't get your hopes up. Microsoft has a long history of promising interoperability, while failing to deliver. In an e-mail to Gates (reprinted in the The Register) I listed some of the opportunities Microsoft has had over the last decade to establish interoperability on the Web.
Microsoft has repeatedly promised full support for key Web standards in Internet Explorer. Here, with reference to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), is what the company said in 1998:
"Microsoft has a deep commitment to working with the W3C on HTML and CSS. We have the first commercial implementation of HTML4, we were the first vendor anywhere to implement even portions of CSS, and we have put a tremendous amount of energy into seeing CSS mature to Level 2. We are still committed to complete implementations of the Recommendations of the W3C in this area (CSS and HTML and the DOM)."
Yet Microsoft failed to deliver on these promises, and the cascading style sheets standard CSS2 is still not supported in IE 6. As a result, interoperability on the Web suffers.
In 2002, Microsoft terminated the Web Core Fonts initiative. The fonts offered were professionally designed and served as a common foundation for Web designers. Microsoft deserves credit for making fonts available, but why pull the plug when designers were addicted?
Microsoft's own Web servers are configured to send different versions of Web pages to disparate browsers. For example, the servers sniff out the Opera browser and send it different style sheets from the ones they send to Microsoft's own Internet Explorer. As a result, Opera renders pages differently.
The acid test
To ensure that IE 7 does not become another failed promise, the Web community will issue a challenge to Microsoft. We will produce a test page, code-named Acid2, that will actively use features Web designers crave, such as fixed positioning of elements.
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