macie5.txt

WEB STANDARDS PROJECT PRAISES MICROSOFT DECISION TO FOCUS ON
STANDARDS IN MAC INTERNET EXPLORER 5.0

The Web Standards Project today praised Microsoft's decision to
focus on implementing key Web Standards in its upcoming release
of the Macintosh version of Internet Explorer 5.0.

In discussions with WSP and in a recently published article
[http://macweek.zdnet.com/1999/09/05/explorer.html], Microsoft
has said its new rendering engine, "Tasman," is intended to allow
Mac Internet Explorer 5.0 to provide 100 percent support for two
key Web standards, developed by the World Wide Web Consortium,
and nearly full support for a third.

"We're delighted to see Microsoft make a commitment to help lay a
solid foundation for Web site development that's free from many
of the browser incompatibilities that have plagued developers for
years," said WSP Project Leader George Olsen.

According to Microsoft, the company plans to provide 100 percent
support for HTML 4.0 and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 1.0, which
allows precise control over the appearance of Web pages.
Microsoft officials have said they're planning on supporting more
than 90 percent for the Document Object Model (DOM) 1.0, which
allows scripting languages to manipulate Web pages.

"While we'll be waiting to see how well Microsoft fulfills this
commitment--just as we're waiting to see how Netscape fulfills a
similar promise made last year--it's the first step in the right
direction, and a step Web developers have been asking for," Olsen
said.

Last month, several thousand Web developers voiced their support
for a WSP petition drive that asked Microsoft to focus on
compliance with W3C standards in the next release of their
browsers.

WSP has been urging browser makers to fully implement these
standards because current browser incompatibilities add at least
25 percent to the cost of developing sites, inconvenience site
visitors, and threaten to fragment the Web.

According to Microsoft, Mac Internet Explorer 5.0 is also slated
to support what the company calls "experimental implementations"
of using CSS to display XML, as well as parts of the CSS-2, DOM
2.0 and XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language).

"We're pleased to see Microsoft working on using CSS to display
XML, since without a way to present it, XML data itself is of
limited use in the browser," Olsen said.

But WSP urged Microsoft to be careful about trying to implement
DOM 2.0 and XSL, standards, which haven't been finished by W3C
yet.

"Microsoft risks ending up with incompatibilities later, if the
final version of these standards are different from what
Microsoft tries to implement now," Olsen said.

In addition to supporting the W3C DOM, Microsoft said it would
also be offering nearly full support for its proprietary Win32
DOM, which will allow common scripting between the Mac and
Windows version of Internet Explorer.

"WSP doesn't object to these sorts of extensions to W3C
standards, but we believe Microsoft should give first priority to
implementing the W3C DOM, since the W3C DOM is intended to
provide compability among all browsers."


About The Web Standards Project: WSP is an international
coalition of Web developers and Web experts who are urging
browser makers to fully support Cascading Style Sheet Level 1
(CSS-1), the Document Object Model (DOM) and XML in their
browsers. Its effort to bring attention to the existing and
potential problems involved with browser incompatibility does not
mean that WSP is opposed to innovations by browser manufacturers.
The coalition merely urges browser manufacturers to use open
standards for enhancements and support existing ones before
adding new features.

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George Olsen

Design Director/Web Architect - 2-Lane Media - http://www.2lm.com

Project Leader - The Web Standards Project -
http://www.webstandards.org