Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

FSFE Supports Microsoft Antitrust Investigation

Posted by kdawson on Tue Dec 25, 2007 12:48 AM
from the browser-wars-ain't-over dept.
Microsoft
An anonymous reader sends us to LinuxElectrons.com for an announcement from the Free Software Foundation Europe, in the form of a letter (PDF) sent to the European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes. FSFE offers to support a possible EU antitrust investigation of Microsoft, declaring that "Microsoft should be required openly, fully and faithfully to implement free and open industry standards." Opera Software issued a complaint to the Competition Commissioner based on anti-competitive behavior in the web browser market. FSFE president Georg Greve writes in the letter, "Although Opera Software does not produce Free Software, we largely share their assessment and concerns regarding the present situation in the Internet browser market."
+ -
story

Related Stories

Submission: FSFE Supports Microsoft Antitrust Investigation by Anonymous Coward
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

FSFE Supports Microsoft Antitrust Investigation 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Confused.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mikesd81 (518581) <mikesd1 AT verizon DOT net> on Tuesday December 25 2007, @01:04AM (#21812656) Homepage
    I never really understood the whole browser inclusion with the antitrust aspect. Of all things Microsoft does, not including a free alternative, or alternative at all, to a internet browser seems petty. I just recently had to format this computer, and recently built another and I promptly downloaded Fire Fox. I think Opera's problem is they just aren't making it like FF and IE are...

    That's not to say that MS is innocent, but they're not blatantly stopping any installation of alternative browsers, or office suites.
    • The antitrust case in the US started out with Sun, Oracle, Netscape and AOL listing a few reasons Microsoft was a monopoly. The one they had solid proof of was the browser. Netscape was (disputably) trying to sell a product. Microsoft bundled IE and destroyed Netscapes marketshare almost overnight. It was a clear case of monopoly abuse despite the effort Microsoft put into their browser.

      Netscape wasn't just going to browse the Internet. It would read news groups, function as a mail client, ... It was a
      • Of course,if someone wants to use an excellent (and much better) successor to the Netscape platform there is always Seamonkey [seamonkey-project.org]. For those who haven't tried it,it makes a great tool to convert those home users still running IE+OE. I personally use it for my secure browsing,with Firefox for non-secure.

        IMHO,that is the great thing about the modern browser scene. I have FF,Opera,Kmeleon, and Seamonkey, and each have their strengths. I personally don't see why they just can't come to a compromise and just have

        • Interestingly, it seems fair to say that the expectation of a web browser included with the OS exists because of Microsoft's decision to put IE into Windows for free back in the day. Before that happened, Netscape even sold its browser in commercial boxes on store shelves. The idea of downloading software for free was simply not an option except for those in the BBS scene and those who had connections to the internet (largely techies, academics and scientists). Most people went to their local mall and bo
          • "Interestingly, it seems fair to say that the expectation of a web browser included with the OS exists because of Microsoft's decision to put IE into Windows for free back in the day."

            The internet was starting to boom before IE was included.
            In the mid 90's when the boom started, you bought a computer with Windows on it and it also came with Prodigy, Compuserve, AOL. People would usually get one of those, and then they're connecting into their networks, using their software and browsers, bypassing Netsc

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by calebt3 (1098475)

      but they're not blatantly stopping any installation of alternative browsers
      Not at the consumer level, no. Although their EULA is worded in such a way that I am sure that they would be legally capable of making that decision if they wanted to. Also, (IIRC) MS punished Dell for trying to install Firefox on their machines.

    • Re:Confused.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Draek (916851) on Tuesday December 25 2007, @02:27AM (#21813026)
      it's not that they included a web browser with their operating system, it's that they included a web browser that doesn't properly implement existing standards *and* includes their own propietary protocols with their OS, thereby leveraging their existing monopoly to prevent standards-compliant products from competing fairly in the market.

      if IE rendered standards-compliant webpages at least as good as Firefox does (let alone how Opera and KHTML do) and they didn't include the ActiveX crap with it, my guess is that nobody would be complaining about them bundling it with their OS. Certainly I wouldn't, at least.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by RAMMS+EIN (578166)
      It's not that Microsoft actively _prevents_ you from installing competing software (browser, media player, ...) on their OS. But the fact that they _include_ their own already poisons the market. Windows's dominance of the desktop market means that the vast majority of desktop users _also_ get Internet Explorer. They _can_ install a different browser, but this requires extra effort that many people are (understandably) not willing to make.

      It is the extra effort that people have to make to get a browser othe
      • *sigh* I don't know why I'm bothering replying to someone who can't spell "lawsuit" and doesn't know the difference between "an" and "and", but here goes...

        Having a monopoly on anything doesn't make you illegal, but it does prevent you from using your monopoly in one market to discourage competition in another market. That's exactly what antitrust laws are designed to prevent.

        Which is exactly what Microsoft did here -- and does. IE7 comes with Vista. IE6 comes with XP. IE has come with every OS they've put out since at least Win98, if not Win95 (too lazy to double-check that). It's not "free", because it's tied to an OS -- but it is bundled with that OS. That basically killed any chance Netscape had of selling a browser, because Microsoft uses their OS monopoly to effectively make IE "free", even though it isn't.

        And that, in turn, helps perpetuate their Windows monopoly, as no one can legally run IE without owning a copy of Windows, and it certainly was never designed to run outside of Windows. Thus, if someone makes a website which is not standards-compliant, but which is dependent on IE (even without ActiveX), that website will only work on Windows.

        In the old business world, the end of that story would have been: Netscape goes out of business, IE is suddenly no longer free, but there's no alternative. (Think like the story of Office before OpenOffice.org.)

        The only reason we avoided this is, Netscape released their browser as open source, thus making it both truly free (in both senses of the word) and actively developed, and IE is none of these things -- thus, Netscape/Mozilla/Pheonix/Firebird/Firefox can actually compete with IE, whereas the original Netscape couldn't. (I know IE7 is better, but it is a direct response to Firefox.)

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by houghi (78078)

          since at least Win98, if not Win95


          The first version of Win95 came without IE. These were both the normal and the a(lowercase) version. The A, B and later C did have (different versions) of Internet Explorer. source [wikipedia.org]

        • Last time I checked, IE came bundled with Mac OS and Mac OS X as well and follows standards about as well as IE on Windows. How's the lock-in argument work now?

          People that know an alternative exists know perfectly well they can download and use that alternative. Taking WMP out of Windows XP (for Windows XP N) also doesn't help anyone since people that don't know about alternatives just want something that plays those "music files" their grandchild sent them. Same with IE. They just want to "view the Inter

          • Last time I checked, IE came bundled with Mac OS and Mac OS X as well and follows standards about as well as IE on Windows. How's the lock-in argument work now?

            I strongly suggest you check it again. [microsoft.com]

          • Re:Do you know what "anti-trust" means? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by erroneus (253617) on Tuesday December 25 2007, @05:46AM (#21813648) Homepage
            It has been a LONG LONG time since you've checked then!

            Fact is, 5.2.3 is the last version of MSIE released for MacOSX... and well, it doesn't work particularly well.

            The lock-in argument works perfectly. Now, if you want to experience the web the way the majority of users do, you have to run Windows and MSIE 6 or 7. If you want to do business with the likes of ADP and several banks and others, you have to run Windows, MSIE and enable ActiveX! (Huge security problem if you didn't already know) Microsoft has enabled and encouraged developers to use their MSIE API as if it were the Win32 API which extends any vulnerability that MSIE has into any program that uses it. (This is where some, but certainly not all of the vendor lock-in comes from.)

            Microsoft's intentional modification of web standards (you think they don't have the expertise in-house to follow standards?) has managed to twist the internet's primary uses into an almost exclusively Microsoft-centric experience. (If you didn't guess, I mean the WWW and Email as the primary uses of the internet.) Microsoft's dominance in the OS and Office arenas have been unfairly exploited to serve their interests in the expansion of their monopoly to the public internet. This serves to create problems for competitors past, present and future in the arena of the public internet. It serves to damage the standards and standards bodies that were created to ensure that competition exists while innovative and technological progress moves forward. It serves to unfairly discourage users from choosing alternative operating systems (by that I mean MacOS and Linux) when doing business or recreational activities. (And is it relevant to suggest that the existence of a Microsoft-monoculture has made possible the exploitation of the entire internet infrastructure as spammers and other assholes create botnets in global proportions... millions and BILLIONS of computers are compromised to serve their interests because the majority of machines are running identical software with identical weaknesses. With every famous worm and every bit of spyware and every bit of email-distributed attack software floating, evolving and plaguing the public internet, there is another clear indication of the mess that Microsoft's monopoly has created.)

            The matter of this antitrust action being limited to the browser addresses only a part of the problem I describe above, but it is a very central part of the problem.

        • Ahh yes I love when people write revisionist history.

          >It's not "free", because it's tied to an OS -- but it is bundled with that OS. That basically killed any chance Netscape had of selling a browser, because Microsoft uses their OS monopoly to effectively make IE "free", even though it isn't.

          What killed Netscape is arrogance! I was in the business world, and my company (which happened to be a very very big bank) was shunned by Netscape. I am not kidding here. The bank wanted to license Netscape Navigato
          • Standards? I find it ironic that the EFF is going after Microsoft. Netscape in its heyday was notorious for ignoring the standards and creating their own. They would constantly add features and do-dads that would only work in the Netscape browser. I remember when frames and tables were added. It sent browsers like Mosaic into a tailspin.

            Quite so, and in addition Netscape had this enormous plagarism issue. Andressen never mentions Tim Berners-Lee except to bash him. They had a book written 'architects of t

        • The part you missed in all that is:
          1. MS used to bundle Compuserve, Prodigy, and AOL because MSN and IE existed. Each of those allowed connections to the internet (through their own networks) without using Netscape via their own software.
          2. Netscape was trying to sell a browser. Something that for the last 10+ years has been as basic a need on a computer as a text editor. Paying for a browser would be akin to paying for notepad. And using an OS without a browser is as worthless as an OS without a text ed

          • Thanks for replying, I think I learned something.

            But one thing to consider:

            IE was also available for other operating systems (Solaris, Mac) but that slowly died over the years. They died as IE development was halted for all platforms, including Windows, not out of some sincester plot.

            I find it odd, both that IE development was halted then (with IE in such a sorry state wrt. standards compliance), and that when IE development was resumed, the Solaris/Mac versions did not also resume.

            We have other browser

          • Or should I use another computer to download a browser, burn a CD and then install it from there?

            I didn't say "should". But, if you look at the history, there was actually a time when a browser was considered separate than the OS -- when you might actually go out and buy a browser when you got Internet access.

            Of course, people are too stupid to do that, so now everything's bundled. Windows is bundled with the machine. Nero is bundled with every CD burner, and WinDVD or PowerDVD with every DVD drive. And I

      • If you open My Computer and type a URL in the address bar it will become Internet Explorer and that is the problem...

        Except that doesn't happen anymore. Vista removed the integration between the shell and IE.
  • Microsoft anti-trust investigation... it's the type of thing that makes you feel warm inside on a cheery Christmas day. Merry Christmas Slashdot!

  • From a web developer standpoint (Score:3, Informative)

    by psychiccyberfreak (1158187) on Tuesday December 25 2007, @01:34AM (#21812792)
    Ok, let me clear it up, Opera is suing MS over their lack of standards compliance, not browser monopoly. Web standards are probably the biggest pain in the ass when it comes to IE. There aren't many good JS debuggers for IE (there are, but I don't find them very bug free). I think getting organizations to support this is a good thing, although in the end it'll probably slip through the cracks...
  • "Microsoft should be required openly, fully and faithfully to implement free and open industry standards."

    Meh, I don't see why. It's up to the customers. They should use open standars, so that they have freedom to select the best vendor and can interoperate with everybody else. If customers choose to pay to get locked into proprietary formats (be they Microsoft's or anybody else's), I don't see how that's Microsoft's fault.

    ``Opera Software issued a complaint to the Competition Commissioner based on anti-com
    • Without following standards M$ abuses its monopoly power over the desktop oS, extending it to other fields, stiffling anyone else regardless if this someone else is proprietary or FOSS person.

      FSFE doesn't like M$'s abuse. Nor does Opera.
      It is easy as pie.

      People didn't choose. They were forced to choose. They had little options, when most computers come with M$ and webdesigners make their sites to follow IE's broken (and not open) standards.
      • People didn't choose. They were forced to choose. They had little options, when most computers come with M$ and webdesigners make their sites to follow IE's broken (and not open) standards.

        No...they weren't actually forced to do anything. What they could have chosen to do is exercise some fscking self-responsibility...tho that's an unpopular option, I know. I've used Firefox ever since the first version of it, and for the most part used Netscape/Mozilla before that. I used IE 4 in particular...but delibe
    • Microsoft has a monopoly, meaning that it can be held to higher standards to insure competition. IANAL, but I think the first complaint is part of the second complaint: If IE implemented standards other web browsers would be able to compete against it more effectively.

  • Can people please start using their brains to realise that if you don't have a web browser installed, that you can still download it? Yes, that's still possible nowadays! You don't even need to have a web browser to do it!

    OEMs could install a tiny program that connects to the Internet and downloads your favourite web browser after asking you which one you would like. They could host a recent version on a fixed spot on their website.

    Can an OEM choose to not install IE and provide Firefox or Opera instead?

  • If Opera manages to get precedence set for forcing Microsoft to adopt CSS standards, imagine the implications with regards to ODF and PDF....

    Ww need more soap, lots of it. Let's make this slope as slippery as we can.
    • Regarding PDF, Microsoft had support for PDF in Office 2k7, but Adobe threatened to sue Microsoft in the EC (fearing that it would threaten Adobe's own monopoly in Office to PDF conversion tools), which forced Microsoft to remove PDF support. How's that for irony? An "open" format (PDF) that Microsoft is forbidden to support in its products.

      As for ODF, Microsoft is sponsoring an open source ODF plugin for Office, so they already do that.

      Oh, and OOXML is well on its way to becoming an ISO standard (see Bri

    • Re:No surprise here (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SanityInAnarchy (655584) <ninja@slaphack.com> on Tuesday December 25 2007, @02:15AM (#21812978) Journal

      It's completely insane that they are seeking to force a modern operating system to ship without a browser.

      I seem to remember that they'd allow you to ship a modern OS with an alternative browser.

      And besides, the only reason that sounds insane is that we've been doing things that way for awhile. How insane is it that MS still ships an OS without antivirus? Especially when their Control Center will nag you to install some third-party antivirus?

      And even more insane is that they are going to have one set of laws which apply to Microsoft, and one set of laws which apply to everyone else...

      No, that's exactly what anti-trust laws are for. Read that again until you get it, because I cannot make it any simpler. Anti-trust laws were created to restrict monopolies. Microsoft is a monopoly, Apple is not. Therefore, Microsoft gets restricted, and Apple does not. If Apple had 90% of the market and Microsoft had 10%, we might be seeing the same thing in reverse...

      Oh, one more thing: I strongly suspect that at least half this argument has nothing to do with unbundling IE, and is really about forcing IE to comply with the web standards they've been shitting on all these years. And this provides a neat counterpoint to above -- if Apple had 90% and MS had 10%, Apple still wouldn't be under as much fire, because Webkit actually follows standards. Wasn't it the first to pass ACID2?

      • . And this provides a neat counterpoint to above -- if Apple had 90% and MS had 10%, Apple still wouldn't be under as much fire, because Webkit actually follows standards. Wasn't it the first to pass ACID2?

        I think you've hit the nail on the head here, but it's all wrapped up in so much red tape and legal crud that it gets missed.

        Opera are certainly pushing for this issue, partly because IE makes their jobs difficult and every web developer I know probably spends 10% of their time specifically hacking stuff together to work with IE 6 and 7. On one hand (Microsoft get their shit together) their hailed as saviours for getting Microsoft to be a responsible company, or if it goes the other way they end up with bi

      • I think the anti-virus issue is always an interesting one to bring up. Customers would probably be happy if Windows came with anti-virus software, because it would mean one less thing to worry about, one less thing to buy and one less hassle. However, you can bet that Norton and McAfee and all the rest would have an anti-trust lawsuit on Microsoft's plate before the product was even released because it would mean they'd sell fewer pieces of software. In fact, if Windows could be made significantly more h

        • So how is something made to keep working for the anti-virus programs, but not web browsers?

          Why the discrepancy?

      • Microsoft is not a monopoly. Read that again. Demonstrably they do not have pricing power in the OS market, and demonstrably there are alternative OS's available for users at many different price ranges.

        I miss the days when "monopoly" actually meant something. e.g. if my oil company is the only place I can buy oil, or if one steel company is the single source of steel for the country. Good times. Nowadays monopoly basically means any company whose competitors are too inefficient to compete in a few v

        • Sigh. Please go re-read your history and economics texts. There never was any time in the U.S. when you could only buy steel or oil from just one company, although there were times when just one company controlled the vast majority of both. However, when a U.S. Federal court finds that you have a monopoly, then guess what: You've got a legal monopoly under U.S. law.

          U.S. Steel, Standard Oil, and now Microsoft have all been found to have such a legal monopoly. U.S. Steel and Standard Oil were both forced
          • First, you act as if they were "convicted" of being a monopoly. Of course, they weren't. It's not like being a convict where suddenly you have this special "monopoly" status. All it means is the next whiny ass competitor to come to court can claim they have a monopoly and refer to the finding of "fact". Second, Microsoft has no control over alternative OS's. That's where the comparison falls flat. Ask any anti-MS dweeb what OS they run - it ain't an MS OS. Ergo, Microsoft does not in any way control

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by cp.tar (871488)

          Microsoft is a part of the W3C.

          That means they first make the standards, then when everybody else implements them, they decide not to comply.

        • That is what a monopoly is and I find it honestly impossible to say that MS controls, all software.

          Monopolies do not need to be 100% to be considered monopolies.

          What about the priciple of capitalism. You know,letting the market decide?

          You must've failed Econ 101.

          Monopolies are one prominent example of a failure of capitalism. This should be explained in detail in any decent textbook.

          And just because I'm an ass, you must've also failed Spelling.

          What if your local government official came in tomorrow an

        • No, the point is that FOSSies can't win over consumers... and shockingly, consumers don't give two shits about "web standards". They just want a browser that works

          Consumers are getting Safari on iPhones, Opera on Wiis, and occasionally are testing out OS X and Linux on the desktop. They do indeed just want a browser that works, but part of a working browser is one which displays websites properly. The only working definition of "properly", and even MS agrees with me here, is "according to the standard".

          So

    • Look you fucking retard, Apple is not a monopoly. Monopolies have to operate by whole different set of rules.

      This concept has been around for decades, and has been explained ad nauseum since Microsoft first began running afoul of the DoJ in the early 1990s, so either you are a fucking stupid troll-faced idiot or you're yet another pathetic immoral Microsoft shill whose job is to come on to /. and hope that there's someone equally dimwitted to buy into the crapola line cooked up by the liars in Redmond.

      Merr

      • Re:No surprise here (Score:4, Interesting)

        by SanityInAnarchy (655584) <ninja@slaphack.com> on Tuesday December 25 2007, @02:09AM (#21812952) Journal

        The difference is that if you don't like Safari in Mac OS X, you drag it to the trash. If you don't like Internet Explorer in Windows... well, tough.

        I'm curious... Does removing Safari also remove Webkit? And if so, does it break other OS X apps?

        If removing Safari does not remove Webkit, then they're really not much better than MS in that respect. If you don't like IE on Windows, you can, in fact, prevent it from being used for just about anything except as an HTML engine for other things -- and even that can be replaced with Gecko, though people generally only bother to do it under Wine.

        The issue here isn't that Microsoft has a monopoly, it's that they abuse that monopoly by strong-arming hardware manufacturers into bundling Windows (and IE) on every PC sold.

        I realize it's different because MS is a monopoly, but Apple does exactly the same thing -- only worse. They control both the hardware and software, and God help you if you should try selling a Mac clone that can run OS X. And that was on PowerPC.

        If you buy a PC, you're FORCED to purchase Windows and IE.

        No longer the case. For instance, you could buy a Mac -- yes, they ARE PCs now, amusing ads notwithstanding. Or you can buy a computer with Linux preloaded -- off the top of my head, Dell and Asus are doing this.

        The only way this is true is if you define a PC as an x86-compatible machine running Windows, which makes your point moot -- if you buy a Windows machine, of course you're forced to run Windows, because, guess what, you're buying a Windows machine!

        Windows is simply the platform of people who don't know any better. It's the AOL of operating systems.

        No, it's worse. It's the platform of people who can't use better.

        I have to use Windows at work. Specifically, I have to use Windows XP Professional, since one of the programs I rely on will only run on Windows XP -- not 2K, not Vista. (Oh, and it needs Windows Media Player 10. Not 9, not 11.)

        I could install Linux, and I have, but I can't use it during work. I can't get virtualization working properly at the moment, so I can't run Windows in a virtual machine. And this software does NOT work on Wine.

        I suppose I could buy a Mac, but what would be the point? The only difference between Apple and Microsoft is Apple products look shinier and work out of the box more often.

        I don't wanna hear the tired argument that Apple should be forced to remove Mac OS X from their Macintosh computers. If Microsoft manufactured computers, I would expect them to be have Windows preinstalled.

        Except that if Microsoft manufactured PCs, you almost certainly could still install Windows on other PCs. That is the very thing that made Windows a disruptive technology -- the deal that they got from IBM which allowed Windows to run on IBM clones.

        Apple does not allow OS X to run on anything but a Mac, and does not allow Macs to come without OS X. So, it is absolutely one huge package, and it is exactly the kind of thing that would get you worked into a froth if Microsoft did something half as bad. The only difference is, Apple is a minority, and people actually want to use Apple products, whereas people are most often forced to use MS products -- but that is not a legal difference.

        • Re:No surprise here (Score:4, Insightful)

          by cp.tar (871488) <cp.tar.bz2@gmail.com> on Tuesday December 25 2007, @06:05AM (#21813726) Journal

          The only difference is, Apple is a minority, and people actually want to use Apple products, whereas people are most often forced to use MS products -- but that is not a legal difference.

          I always thought that MS being a monopoly made it a legal difference as well.

          That's why Apple may do some things, while if MS did the same, that would be anti-competitive.

        • The only way this is true is if you define a PC as an x86-compatible machine running Windows, which makes your point moot -- if you buy a Windows machine, of course you're forced to run Windows, because, guess what, you're buying a Windows machine!

          What makes your point quite pointless, is that you don't buy a "apple" or "windows" machine, you buy a computer and licensing for some software that comes pre-installed as a "favour" they do to you, who are not capable of doing it yourself.
          So in fact you are pa

          • This could be easily solved if the pre-installed software would only work after you insert an activation code related to your license IF AND ONLY IF you bought said license as well as the computer, but it would have to be two quite different things.

            That is a most excellent point. In fact you could include a variety of Windows (XP, Vista with MCE/Home/Premium/Pro 32 bit or 64 bit etc, including a variety of Linux and even Solaris i86/i86_64 for that mater. Even a 160GB drive could hold 30+ choices and ju

        • Safari supports web standards, IE does not. That is a fundamental difference.

          As long as you code in Web standards,they will appear fine in Safari, you don't even need the browser to test while it runs under Windows.

          To make sure your site is visible to monsters majority (IE) users, you HAVE TO buy Windows and test it with IE. It fails the standards so you either code specifically to "fix" your standards compliant code or you live real life, financial consequences.

          That is what Opera demands, standards complia
          • This always comes up. The fact is that the difference in standards between monopolies and non-monopolies are not nearly as vast as many slashdotters think. It's not so simple as Apple can do it and MS can't. In addition, once a particular government has had its day in court and won, it rapidly loses interest in pursing the company further.

            Of course, the US government ignores monopolies all the time: TicketMaster has had a monopoly far more pervasive than MS's for a decade or more but nothing was done. Ironi
    • Acid 2's hardly an exhaustive test of standards compliance. Passing it's good, but a decent HTML, CSS and JS test suite involve more than a smiley face and one person saying "yup, looks like a smiley face, here's a downsampled gif".
    • so you've made the jump from an IE developer saying that IE8 passes the acid2 test to IE8 supporting standards. Isn't that a pretty big jump?
      • Clever. AC offers a minicity troll and comments his own troll confirming it wasn't.
        But it is. Stay off.
      • Add to this that in an ideal world each site would scale to almost any screen resolution (I, and many other users, absolutely detest 800x600-px layouts. Any cell-phone and PDA users out there care to weigh in?) and you have a recipe for frustration when trying to work in various "hacks" to have different code displayed by different browsers.

        Not sure where microsoft's responsibility figures into any of that... Personally, I'd blame CSS, which frankly is an unwieldy, terribly designed piece of crap the momen

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.