I couldn’t help lifting this off the latest Sitepoint newsletter:
‘New Official CSS Site Not Compatible with Internet Explorer
The Web people at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) have made a gutsy move by launching a redesigned version of the Cascading Style Sheets site that does not work on Internet Explorer for Windows.
In standards-compliant browsers like Netscape 7, Mozilla 1.2, Opera 7, and Internet Explorer 5 for Macintosh, the primary navigation bar of the site hovers solidly on the right of the page thanks to the CSS2 property ‘position: fixed’. In Internet Explorer 6 for Windows (which doesn’t support that property value), however, the sidebar scrolls, and CSS bugs in the browser cause the boxes in the sidebar to blow out to an unusual (and unattractive) size.
As is the case with most CSS-only designs, the site remains usable despite the formatting problems in Internet Explorer 6. Since I’m sure that a site with as high a profile as this one would have been tested in IE6 for Windows, the CSS Working Group can only intend this move as a kick in the pants to Microsoft. Think they’ll get the message?
“Hergee berger snooger bork,” says Opera Manager
In a hilarious, but equally pointed move in criticism of Microsoft, Opera has released a special edition of their Opera 7 browser that replaces the text on the MSN Website with language familiar to fans of the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show.
Opera 7 “Bork” Edition is a protest against Microsoft’s practice of blocking users of Opera and other alternative browsers from a site that they could easily display. The MSN Web site specifically detects Opera 6 and earlier and sends them to a “simplified” version of the site with broken layout elements.’
[ update: Recent Opera press release on this matter. ]
Comments
Microsoft work to meet standards? Thats a joke, too bad its not funny.
Indeed, not funny at all.
In fact, Microsoft’s own website does not validate. I just checked its front page. And they use a mesh of CSS with font tags. So much for practising what they preach.