Finish the job!

The highlight of my life as a teenage computer geek came when Chris Wilson, head of the Microsoft Internet Explorer team, told me he owed me a beer.\nDisclaimer: it was only a figure of speech -- he was not offering alcohol to a minor. Let me explain the context a little better.\nI've believed for years that the World Wide Web is the only mass medium that truly belongs to the masses. If it belonged to corporations, they wouldn't have screwed it up for us.\nWhat if 35 mm film was not always exactly 35 mm and it wouldn't always fit into your camera? This illustrates the frustrating problem with the Web as a medium: inconsistent implementation of specifications.\nVirtually every other medium has a strict set of specifications and standards. Compact discs have a specific size, and data is encoded onto them in a standardized way. If you look at CDs, film, print or other mass media, they are all implemented to rigid specifications to make sure you get the same picture, song or page, every time.\nNot so with the World Wide Web. The official specifications for the Hypertext Markup Language and Cascading Style Sheets are available to the public, but not all Web browsers implement these specs correctly. Because of this, a Web page can look radically different from one Web browser to another. Even Web designs with the cleanest HTML and CSS code can be mangled by a bad browser.\nOne of the worst browsers available today is also the most common one: Internet Explorer for Windows. Back in 1998, Microsoft had the best browser on the market, hands-down. The problem is that the Web has changed a lot in seven years, and Explorer hasn't.\nLike many Web developers, Wilson wanted to see a better implementation of HTML and CSS in Internet Explorer. Unfortunately, the list of priorities handed to him by his superiors made correct implementation impossible.\nMicrosoft had invented some proprietary features that would not work in any other browser. With later versions of HTML and CSS, Microsoft's proprietary features contradicted some parts of the official specs, making correct implementation impossible. They sold technology using these proprietary extensions to other businesses, mostly for use in their corporate intranets. Microsoft could not afford to drop these extensions -- and resulting revenue stream -- in favor of a correct implementation of HTML and CSS.\nWhen other zealous computer geeks started harassing Wilson in a mailing list I used to be on at the time, I stepped up and pointed out it's not fair to lash out at him for decisions he didn't make. Then Wilson said he owed me a beer.\nThis summer, Microsoft is set to finally release a new version of its flagship browser. Wilson has stated in a blog entry that there will be a lot of bug fixes for Explorer's implementation of HTML and CSS. If Wilson delivers, and helps finally fix the Web for all of us, I would gladly accept Internet Explorer 7 in place of that beer.