Six Revisions: Why IE9 Is A Web Designer’s Nightmare
The early warning signs were there from the start, and people have criticized Microsoft’s choice to include HTML5 and CSS3 (both unfinished specifications), arguing that poor rendering (which does exist) and future changes could leave the browser in an IE6-like situation when it gets outdated. The frequent release cycles and automatic updates (by default) of other browsers will minimize this problem, but given how slow Internet Explorer has always been with major versions, it may well become the IE6 of 2020!
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It’s true that while Microsoft’s new browser appears far from perfect, no other browser gets it quite right either. All of the other browsers have their share of flaws and bugs, missing technologies, and incomplete spec implementations.
However, the problem with Microsoft is partly due to how it portrays itself and the frustrating way it sometimes goes one step forward, two steps back.
I think some of the blame has to go to the standards’ bodies — they have to agree on something. It’s hard on agreement when you have to test how it’s going to look, but this situation makes it hard for all developers, browser and web.