Web Group Pushes for IE to Conform to Standards - Company Business and Marketing

ENT, Oct 6, 1999

The Web Standards Project (WSP, www. webstandards.org), a group of developers pushing Web standards, has called on Microsoft Corp. to fully support guidelines recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C, www.w3c.org) in its next release of Internet Explorer.

"In the past, Internet Explorer was the leader in standards support," said George Olson, head of the WSP, in a statement. "Unfortunately, Microsoft now appears noncommittal about implementing key Web standards -- those forming the foundation for the future of the Web."

Olson said WSP is asking Microsoft to deliver 100 percent support for Cascading Style Sheets, HTML 4.0, the Document Object Model (DOM) 1.0 and XML. He says Netscape promised full support for these standards in Navigator 5.0.

WSP presented Microsoft with a petition signed by more than 1,000 Web developers from Fortune 500 companies and major educational and government institutions. Olson said ignorance of the standards results in a 25 percent increase to the cost of building sites due to workarounds and extra debugging. He also said ignoring the standards prevents sites from using advanced features that would provide a richer and more useful experience for site visitors and threatens to fragment the Web, especially as browsers move beyond the desktop.

"The current fight between AOL [America Online Inc.] and Microsoft over instant messaging shows how the public loses when companies produce similar but incompatible products," Olson proclaims. "The same ridiculous situation exists for browsing the Web because browser makers have failed to implement the common set of standards. If Microsoft wants to argue that common standards are needed for instant messaging, they should be prepared to implement existing Web standards in their browser."