I posted here recently that Dean had made comment on the IE blog that they would soon be addressing once and for all what the new version of IE (IE7) would do in terms of supporting web standards, in particular CSS 2 and XHTML 1.0.
There’s been nothing explicitly said so far but there have been one or two just-below-the-surface mutterings in slightly related postings.
Today, for example, Dean made a post about the new Netscape beta and paid particular attention to its ability to switch rendering engines which he thinks is a good thing.
Here’s his closing statement:
I look forward to trying the Netscape beta and having pages work the way they do in IE. I’m happy to see another browser built on top of the IE platform to go along with NetCaptor, Maxthon,
Now, is it just me being over-paranoid or does the phrase I look forward to trying the Netscape beta and having pages work the way they do in IE. sound worrying in relation to what a new IE might do to anyone else? It read to me like a warning shot that this dual-rendering ability was going to absolve the IE team from making their rendering engine conform to web standards. At the very least its a disappointing solution on Netscapes part to cater for a browser that doesn’t work very well. At worst it could be the excuse the IE team need to not fix the IE rendering engine.
Or am I being overly paranoid here?
Left Brain Right Brain 
That said, I’ve just seen this in a previous post on scripting:
Make of that what you will!
On the announcement of IE7 I made the assumption that there would at least be CSS 2 and PNG support.
Having seen posts from the likes of Anne vK and Nick Finck, and the lack of explicit information from Dean, I am now firmly of the opinion that the rendering engine is not going to change.
Call me a cynic: IE 7 is a security patch that has been given a version bump to help combat the increased market share of Firefox.
Furthermore, what kind of world is Dean living in where he thinks it is good to have two rendering engines displaying pages built with web standards differently.
happy to see another browser built on top of the IE platform
The implied arrogance is mind bending.
At least we will be spared the potential for another messed up MS attempt at web standards. Better the devil you know I guess.
You’re not being paranoid. If they were going to up the game with respect to standards, Dean would have said it by now. He dances around ever saying anything concrete.
“… we will be concentrating on other more pressing issues with our support for standards in the foreseeable future.”
I don’t know if he means “than support for standards” here. It seems like he’s purposefully clouding things.
I’d love to be proved wrong on this.
I think you’re being overly paranoid 🙂
Sorry I’ve been slow to post IE7 specifics. I have 3 half-started posts in my Inbox.
I’m not trying to pass judgment about dual rendering as a good thing or a bad thing. I think it’s one way to deal with rendering differences. I think every big release of IE (3, 4, 5, 5.5, 6) to date has made improvements to IE’s rendering capabilities.
I think “warning shot” and “absolve” and “browser that doesn’t work very well” and “excuse” and “fix” are pretty strong words. Not sure how you want me to parse them.
I appreciate the response Dean, its good to see you taking a wider interest.
However I do stand by what I said. The facts are that IE’s rendering engine is not very good – if your judging criteria is web standards such as XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2. The reason I use words like ‘warning shot’ and ‘absolve’ is that for the last few years designers who care about web standards have really struggled with IE from 5 through 6. You must know that. You must also know (judging by 99 percent of the comments on the IE blog) how desperately designers want to be able to include IE properly. Its been a pretty depressing time recently when you see way beter support for Gecko browsers and Opera and know that a not small portion of your design time is going to have to go into fixing IE’s rendering bugs.
You’ve got such an opportunity here to shut all us smartarses up and give everyone a browser thats light, fast, innovative and standards compliant!
Let me put it to you another way – when you fire up Visual Studio and start tapping away do you ever think – screw it, it doesn’t really matter about the quality of my code. I’m willing to bet you never think that. Well neither do I, which is why I think standards and standards support is the absolute bottom line of what a web browser should support.
Thanks for the comments though and I’ll hold you to that non-paranoid thing ;o)