[Saulbadguy]

Originally Posted by rufusmaqe

No, it's not a pain in the ass for developers.

Internet Explorer is FULLY compliant with all of the major standards, namely HTML 4.0 and SSL/TLS.

The problem IS the developers themselves. They want to write flashy little applets in Java, or ASP code, or Flash movies.

That's NOT IE'S FAULT.

Like I said..I'm not too sure about it, because i'm not a developer.

Originally Posted by jcroft

It's not so much about HTML. Most modern browser render HTML fine. It's really more about CSS and the DOM. Firefox, Safari, Opera, and most every other major modern browser attempts to render CSS to the spec, and perform DOM behaviors as spec'd, too. IE, though, chooses to implement the DOM in it's own way in many cases. IE 6, when it came out, was pretty advanced as far as it's CSS support. However, it hasn't received an update to it's CSS rendering engine since it first came out (which was what, four years ago?). Now, it is way, way behind the other browsers, which makes it difficult to deal with. Microsoft has said they don't plan any significant updates to the CSS rendering engine for Longhorn and IE7, either -- they don't have time, because they need to focus on security flaws. Basically, IE is holding web developers to technology circa about 1998. The CSS spec and DOM have been in place for years, but until IE implements them in their entirety and to the spec, it will always be a hassle, because we web developers have to go back through our code and add exceptions just for IE. If IE was compliant with the specs, code would be virtually guaranteed to work in all browsers.

So who is right..rufus or jcroft? I do know that MS rarely updates Internet Explorer, save for a security hole here and there.