The week in your words: IE8, Toshiba and Mozilla

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 6 Jun 2008 at 17:38

In a week that saw Microsoft instruct everyone to run for the hills and prepare for Internet Explorer 8, Toshiba return from the hills to resume war on Sony, and Mozilla try and usher everyone into the hills to form a big, friendly, commune, we take a look back to see what our readers have made of it all.

Go back to your websites and prepare for IE8

The week began with Microsoft stocking up on canned food and shotguns, with one wary eye on the heavens as the shadow of Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 fell. It was, as it turned out, one of those comedy apocalypses brought on by Microsoft itself, which has finally discovered just how much of a pain it is to have a standards-based browser, after years of encouraging non-standard pages.

"It's all very commendable Microsoft finally adopting standards but as long as it has a 'pretend to be an old, broken version' [IE7 emulate] feature, it means site owners/coders with the 'everyone uses Windows/IE' mentality will still continue to use broken code knowing full well that, at the click of a button (by the user), it will render okay in Internet Explorer 8," laments parishmco.

Swissmac agreed... kind of: "Well, I have to give some credit to Microsoft here - finally it is beginning to get the message. Maybe with only one ear so far, but any move away from bully-boy tactics to full standards compliance is to be welcomed, but then they go and spoil it all... [with the] 'get out of jail free' card the emulate IE7 button will give web developers."

Shark, however, had clearly already gorged on his chunk of flesh that day, and was feeling sated and benevolent: "Sure, if Microsoft had removed the 'emulate IE7' feature then it would have provided a hefty and very useful stick as well as a carrot for those recalcitrant web developers to get their coding house in order, but the cost (to everyone with old-school, uneditable web pages) would be too high, and I think that its solution, whilst not being the ideal route to getting everybody coding to web standards, is a good, pragmatic approach for the real world."

Toshiba to resume format wars?

The tattle mill was in full flow this week, stoking the fires of the long-gone format war, by whispering rumours in Sony's ear that Toshiba had been saying rude things about its mum and would be waiting behind the bike sheds if it thought it was hard enough. This is what happens if you say nothing and let rumours circulate that you're working on a bleeding edge rival to Blu-ray... again.

"Returning to the format war in six months time will be a waste of time, and money," says Matt_2k34, gently humming the theme of WAR, what is it good for? "They should stop complaining, count their losses and move over to Blu-ray, like everyone else."

caladan couldn't hear that above the loud thump of his boot hitting the man on the ground: "Oh dear, Toshiba's trying to flog a dead horse. Face it guys, YOU LOST! Turn your attention to something else please!"

Surely, somebody will stand up for Toshiba, which, after all, hasn't actually done anything yet.

"I say Kudos to Toshiba," says puma25uk, always one for the underdog. "It's been a while since it was muscled out of the market, perhaps by less than ethical methods, and ... without a competitor, Sony stepped back and things are going back at usual snail-like pace."