Will IE Survive HTML 5 and CSS 3?

During the formative years of the web, developers had to make choices about what browser(s) to support, and what non-standard extensions to use. Both Netscape and Internet Explorer (IE) played this gee-whiz game. Then something funny happened. Developers grew increasingly vexed by having to accommodate these different flavors…it was time for standards.

New flavors of HTML came along, incorporating some of the previous extensions while dropping or changing others. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) appeared, and starting making very clear how important it was that developers and browsers started adhering to the same standards. Almost everyone started making their browsers more standards compliant. How a standards-compliant page displayed on Browser-X now pretty much looked the same on Browser-Y. Everyone seemed to have gotten the memo…well, everyone except Microsoft. Their IE browser has consistently flouted the standards everyone else was trying to settle on.

The refrain has been the same for a very long time: if you code web pages, you have to particularly code in exceptions to accommodate IE (and sometimes others). You’d think, after all of this time, the situation would have improved. And yet….

Let’s take a look at a site (http://www.findmebyip.com/litmus/#html5-web-applications (should open a pop-up)) that lists the current state of browser compatibility with the emerging, not yet finalized, HTML 5 and CSS 3 standards.

One thing is immediately obvious: IE is being left in the dust. By all appearances, Microsoft isn’t even trying to pay lip service to adhering to web standards at this point. It isn’t terribly surprising, given the fun to be had with IE for as long as CSS has been out, but I’d hoped they’d at least try, given their large installed base.

Some might argue that all will be well with IE 9, and besides, these aren’t  final standards yet and Microsoft must playing it close to the vest. Perhaps. But it does seem that every one of their competitors will have worked out all the real-world quirks to HTML 5 and CSS 3 by the time the standards are finalized. Microsoft, since they have been less than 100% compliant with the standards all along, is playing catch-up in the browser game.

It might just be that Microsoft has decided that their resources are better focused on other projects. Who knows what goes on in Redmond? All I know is that I code to the standards, curse the IE (and sometimes Mozilla) exceptions, and have all but abandoned IE for all except those sites (a diminishing number) that can only be properly viewed with IE. Once HTML 5 and CSS 3 are the coding standards, will IE be left in the dust?