Now that IE7 has been distributed via Windows Update to thousands upon thousands of Microsoft customers and fanboys alike all over the world, we're seeing a whole bunch of sites with layouts that break because they are written with hacks and workarounds designed for IE6.
The news comes from a survey carried out by usability consultancy Etre, who remind us that Microsoft still have a 80% share of the web market with their Windows-integrated Internet Explorer browser.
Ironically, it's the standards-compliant sites that have the most problems because they are used to having to implement special cases for IE6 which are now obsolete in IE7, some of which are now counterproductive. Non standards-compliant sites were designed as shoddy code to work with a shoddy renderer, which IE7 still provides in its Quirks Mode for compatibility.
It is worth pointing out, however, that the general lack of adherence to web standards among the FTSE 100 companies may have insulated them somewhat from IE7's various bugs and glitches.
IE7 tends to struggle most with standards-compliant sites – particularly those using hacks and filters to achieve decent presentation in IE6. Given that most sites aren't standards-compliant, however, we think our results are pretty representative.
Although this development would appear to be a shout-out in favour of not writing with proper web standards in mind, in fact it merely highlights the damage done by Microsoft's past infractions with its famously naughty Internet Explorer browser. They're fixing the product now but the damage is (for the most part) done, and it'll take some time to recover.
Hopefully we can all use this as a lesson to avoid this sort of a mess coming up in the future. Standards compliance is good, and ignoring it will come around to bite you in the ass eventually, even if it takes the improvement of a bad browser to do so.
For those of you not already aware, the RIAA remains inexplicably unaware of any existing reason that they should not have total, uncontrolled access to the hard drive of a defendant accused of intellectual property violations.
Whilst the parallel between calling a RIAA-aligned expert and calling any other RIAA-aligned witness might be pretty hard to ignore, it does also seem silly that the plaintiffs in a case should be able to choose the primary investigators of evidence at a whim. And, well, they can't… they just think they should be able to, despite yet another judge saying no.
That said, even if as the defendant you can call an independent expert to back up your defence, is it really any different? It that expert totally non-biased? No. Everyone has their views about file sharing and I suspect it would be hard to ignore one's own feelings about a case when asked to give an 'independent' opinion in court.
Then there's the problem that any expert who decides the plaintiffs are talking rubbish and that there are no offending goods on the hard drive in question are likely to simply get classed as thief-lovers. After all, someone sharing MP3s doesn't have any legal rights, right? And by extension, anyone trying to defend their [non-existent] rights must also support the sharing of MP3s and movies, right?
Basically the stigma over sharing 'copyrighted material' is, in my opinion, blocking the way to find a common ground between the communist, dictatorial media moguls stuck in the Dark Ages and the community at large who want variety, quality and affordability. Oh, and the ability to carry around songs on a device of their choosing, in a format of their choosing and be able to retain complete control of the songs. Or is that just a stretch?
I've gone on a couple of times about how the recording industry on the whole needs to get used to the idea that embracing the internet as a free medium is a positive thing.
We're starting to see more and more real-world examples to back up the idea that the age-old top-down distribution model cannot simply be extended to the digital media. More to the point, adding DRM to songs makes content less useful, doesn't really stop piracy and just ends up pissing off the customers.
Last week we saw Weird Al mention that he realises this. Now a small-town radio station has announced its success at branching out onto the internet. It's not a huge setup but the idea that embracing the larger free market can draw a crowd to the stuff that generates revenue, and if nothing else it makes you look cool and modern.
One day, if more examples like this pop up, the industry will take note and realise that giving customers what they want is the quickest way to become successful… we hope.
After much ado recently about stupid patent applications and controversy over the actual purpose of the (US) patent system, the New York Times has come out in favour of what every sane person knows: patents are supposed to encourage innovation, not to prevent competition.
Following the recent NY Times article on how tax strategies are getting patented, the paper has come out with an opinion piece about how our patent system is broken and rewarding exactly the opposite behavior that it was intended to encourage: "Patents are supposed to encourage innovation, rewarding the individual for the greater good of society. But excessive or overly broad patents can slow business activity to the pace of cold molasses." This isn't anything new to plenty of folks, of course. However, it is good to see a publication like the NY Times make the point as well.
Yay.
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