Raising the stakes in the standards game

The Microsoft juggernaut is set to release yet another operating system this summer, Windows Millennium Edition (ME), along with a new version of Internet Explorer (IE), which the company says offers "the broadest support of standards yet".

However, not everyone agrees with this statement. Speaking only days after the IE 5.5 announcement, Jeffrey Zeldman, group leader at The Web Standards Project, had a few choice words for Microsoft. "We are incensed by Microsoft's arrogance, and perplexed by its schizophrenic decision to support standards on one platform while undercutting them on another," he said.

He was referring to Microsoft's decision to launch a completely standards-compliant browser for the Macintosh operating system, while throwing standards to the wind with its Windows version.

This could mark a fresh outbreak of fighting in the browser war that was central to Microsoft's ultimately unsuccessful defence of allegations from the US Department of Justice that it had broken anti-monopoly laws by bundling its own browser with the highly successful Windows platform.

While Microsoft is intent on releasing a non-compliant browser, Netscape has been following an altogether different path. By adopting the open source Mozilla browser, it has gained a highly regarded browser engine, Gecko, as well as a fully standards-compliant browser that will work with a wide range of appliances, from mobile phones to set-top boxes.

Balancing act
For a long time the web standards debate has been a fine balance between the 'innovation' introduced by the two major browser vendors and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards body. Members of W3C include representatives of major software and technology vendors and the group is led by the man who single-handedly invented the internet as we know it - Tim Berners-Lee.

W3C recently announced a draft specification for XHTML, a version of HTML4 reformulated in XML. The ultimate aim of this move is to restructure the web in XML, a language that is far more versatile than HTML but that also requires strict adherence to syntax. XHTML will be a stepping stone, allowing for backwards compatibility with HTML 4 while also rendering pages correctly in an XML-only browser.

Essentially, this represents a lock-down of features: XML has emerged as the best balance between the rigidity of SGML (standard generalised markup language), and the ease-of-use and gentle learning curve of HTML.

By converting the current HTML feature-set into properly formulated XMLDTDs (document type definitions), the W3C is attempting to force vendors to produce standards-compliant browsers.

Alarm bells are ringing
This is also a wake-up call for web designers. By turning HTML into XML-compliant code through XHTML, the W3C is guiding the way to an all-XML web, where browsers and web documents must be compliant. XML gives designers much more flexibility and control, but also requires that documents be 'well-formed' - they must follow strict rules in terms of layout and structure. HTML designers can currently get away with, for example, missing end-tags or using a mixture of upper and lower case tags.

The benefits of XML are certainly worth aiming for, however. Its flexibility means that XHTML modules can be defined to cater for the specific requirements of different devices, such as mobile phones, personal digital assistants and set-top boxes. These devices will not require a full-blown web browser, but may only have room for displaying a few lines of information. The tight integration of an XHTML document will allow parsers on the web server to pull out from an XHTML document everything that can be rendered on a particular device.

So where does this leave the browser manufacturers? On the surface, both IE 5.0 and Mozilla now support XML, but there is still a lot of fine detail that can cause incompatibility. Pure XML documents are not designed to be displayed 'as is' in a browser window, but instead rely on style sheets. Specifically these are XSL (extensible style sheets), for which there is only limited support in the two major browsers today, and cascading style sheets (CSS).

However, there are signs that Microsoft is hoping to make another bold attempt at 'innovating' with version 5.5 of IE. Although the company promises wider support for CSS, this is in fact a cover-up - more elements of style sheet standards (CSS1, CSS2 and CSS3) are supported, but none are supported in full. IE 5.5 also re-introduces the grim spectre of proprietary 'innovations' that tie the browser into the Windows shell, such as support for coloured scroll bars.

The problem with this type of innovation is that it loses the whole value of standards, which is to create a solid base for new standards to be built on. XML is not taking off because other standards, such as CSS, are not being used because of the lack of browser support. There is a complicated chain of interdependencies that requires one set of standards to be supported, used and matured before another set of standards can flourish.

Led by demand
Neil Laver, Microsoft's Windows 2000 product manager and the spokesman for IE 5.5 in the UK, insists that Microsoft's customers have asked for these new features, particularly for use on intranets. In fact, Laver's explanation for the non-standard features that are rife in IE 5.5 is simply a regurgitation of the company spin. You can read this for yourself on the company's website, msdn.microsoft.com/voices/ie55.asp. What Laver could not explain, however, is why IE 5.0 for Macintosh has almost perfect HTML 4 and CSS1 support, yet the new version for Windows does not.

"We are afraid that if Microsoft follows through with its plans, developers will be helplessly spun in Microsoft's direction and away from standards, owing to the business realities of market share," says Zeldman. "Many developers have said otherwise, and have written to us and told us that they are fed up, and will build for standards. And if IE 5.5 breaks those, these developers say, 'So be it'."

Zeldman's only hope for a standards-based future is that the Mozilla project produces a final product that is compelling enough to attract a larger market. An alternative scenario is that America Online (AOL), Netscape's parent company, decides to switch its 20-odd million users over to a Mozilla-based browser, although this will not happen until its deal with Microsoft (to ship IE with its software in return for an AOL icon on the Windows desktop) runs out.

In the meantime, how are developers coping with a lack of standards? To create interactive pages with dynamic content, many developers have decided to stop waiting for a standard Document Object Model (Dom) and style sheet support, and instead are turning to Macromedia's Flash language, which, although proprietary, is cross-platform.

Lorelei Brown, a senior interface engineer for Appnet, says: "It's both a nuisance and a nightmare to work with two Doms, and a million different combinations of operating system and browser versions. In that sense, Flash is easier to deal with." There are still problems, however, as Flash requires a newer browser and Java support to be turned on, and on top of this its files can be rather large. However, this is nothing when compared with the problems developers are facing when trying to code this interaction by hand.

The big question
Brown is sceptical that Microsoft will change its tack. "Microsoft tried to wow users with all kinds of wild features in IE 4.0, but they never got used because you couldn't view them in Netscape, so developers ignored them. However, now that Netscape's market share is around 10 to 15 per cent, many developers are just ignoring Netscape, or allowing it to degrade without having full functionality," she says.

"Because Microsoft doesn't have any competition to speak of, it doesn't have any more reason to deliver a standards compliant browser than it does to deliver functional, bug-free software."

The question is now whether W3C can force through XHTML and help to promote XML before Microsoft uses its Windows monopoly to once again skew the standards process. However, with Windows 2000 sales doing well, and Windows ME set to break sales records once again, the outlook is not good.

"Even some who want to support standards will be forced by their chief executive or their clients to do otherwise," complains Zeldman. "That is why this move by Microsoft is so destructive. It is deliberately fragmenting the market and trusting that its larger market share will force web builders to conform."

When Netscape was the only browser worth using, back in 1994, it managed to push through a number of its own innovations. The company did this by simply implementing the changes into its client software, and then submitting them to the standards process afterwards. However, this all changed in 1995 when Microsoft released Windows 95 and IE 3.0. Microsoft started to undermine Netscape's dominance through the sheer force of its Windows monopoly. It also contained a number of 'innovations', and proved that Microsoft was just as keen to make its mark on the standards process.

Although Microsoft's IE has, in recent years, dominated the browser market, it looked like the standards body had finally won the war. Netscape, although badly out of touch with its 4.x versions, has promised full standards compliance with the Mozilla project. This aim is to produce a cross-platform, open source and modular browser using the Gecko HTML rendering engine. The later versions of IE had also been praised for their compliance - especially the Macintosh version of IE5.

With the variety of web-enabled devices on the market, and the deluge yet to come, non-standards compliant browsers are impossible to deal with. The worrying thing is that third-party vendors are likely to design their content around Microsoft, because of market forces.