Opera chief: Microsoft's IE 8 'undermines' web standards

Silverlight a lesson in openness
If Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 8 this week - as expected - then the company will likely be congratulated by many for doing the right thing and finally adding support for web standards to its browser.

For years, Microsoft has gone its own way online with its own IE rending engine. That's forced web developers to either build one version of their web sites for IE and another for all those other browsers that do implement HTML and CSS in a broadly consistent way or simply to target IE and get to the others later - or never. That's distorted the market.

When IE 8 does arrive, though, whatever standards support it offers isn't going to satisfy the browser company whose complaint over lack of web standards support and bundling of IE with Windows spurred the European Union into investigating Microsoft last year. That case has now attracted the backing of browser competitors Google and Mozilla.

Opera Software chief executive Jon von Tetzchner told The Reg that while Microsoft is headed in the right direction, IE continues to undermine open standards on the web.

The fundamental problem is Microsoft's decision to allow users to continue to view billions of old pages optimized for non-compliant IE 6 and 7 that would otherwise be scrambled in IE 8.

As far as von Tetzchner is concerned, that's not just bad for companies like Opera that must continue wasting time and money simply updating sites built for IE 6 and 7 to work with their browsers. It also means that Microsoft continues to exert undue and damaging influence over the web.

"We want to see there's competition and a referee - to make sure everybody follows the rules and ensure there's competition in the market," von Tetzchner said.

Von Tetzchner has little truck with the dual rendering approach Microsoft's taken on IE, and he clearly believes Microsoft could have leveraged its size to kill the issue once and for all with IE 8.

"Microsoft has a unique position - the fact is, as soon as they have a browser out there they get massive volumes, people are going to code for them. It's only a mater of time. It's a lot more difficult for the competition," he said.

But the company's size and presence has a negative side. Von Tetzchner is worried that after Microsoft's hiatus on browser development in the early 2000s, the company is back in the game and that it can crush the competition by pumping out IE through Windows desktops.

This raises the further risk that the web becomes distorted, as innovation will be dictated at the pace Microsoft chooses to move at and on technologies that it favors. It's noteworthy that while Microsoft has adopted the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C's) HTML 5 and CSS 2.1 in IE 8, it has not employed Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) that has been employed by Mozilla, Google, and Opera and is also from the W3C stable.

"The risk we are seeing is Microsoft is back and now working on the browser and the fact they didn't work on the browser gave room for the competition...if Microsoft provides a better product you might see a reversal of the trend - it's a dangerous thing for the internet," he said.

EU backing

Von Tetzchner supports an EU decision that would see Microsoft not just forced to support web standards, but also to distribute competitors to IE in Windows and through downloads. The company's consulted with the EU on a potential settlement around this, although von Tetzchner refused to provide details on Opera's discussions with regulators.

To prove his belief in the need for open standards and the need to compel Microsoft, von Tetzchner pointed to Microsoft's browser-based media-player plug in Silverlight, as an example of how Microsoft can drag its feet in areas that don't support its best interests.

Initially, Microsoft pushed off Silverlight on Linux. It did embrace the Silverlight plug-in to Firefox that - of course - runs on Windows in addition to Mac. Now, though, Silverlight is running on Linux thanks to the Novell-backed Moonlight project, led by Miguel de Icaza.

Microsoft has talked of putting Silverlight on mobile phones, but that market is fractured with different handsets while Microsoft has its own Windows mobile operating-system contender to things like Symbian, the iPhone, Android, and a host of vendor-specific operating systems. Without open standards, Microsoft can pick and chose where to put Silverlight in a mobile market where Opera's Mini browser has done very well.

"Just getting Silverlight on to Linux was a problem," von Tetzchner said. "What about getting it onto all those mobile phones and TVs - then it becomes: is this in Microsoft's interest do to so? The thing about open standards is, if someone doesn't think it's in their interest to do something, somebody else will."

Von Tetzchner noted that Opera is happy to integrate with Silverlight wherever it is.

In case you think this sounds like a case of the little company picking on a big, dumb IT giant in the perennially easy field of lack of support for web standards, von Tetzchner is also critical of the far smaller and consumer-focused Apple over the iPhone. The charge is similar - that Apple is hurting the competition and denying choice - but this battle is different. Instead of web standards, the subject is licensing.

Opera has built an internal version of its Mini browser running on the iPhone, but has been put off building the browser because of what's seen as Apple's restrictive licensing.

Von Tetzchner said the uncertainty surrounding Apple's license meant Opera could not justify the considerable amount of work it would take to port Opera Mini to the iPhone. The Mini runs on devices like the Blackberry, but lacks unique iPhone features like two-fingered touch.

"To put an effort into making it customized to work on the iPhone - that's a fair amount of work, and doing that at the risk of not getting distribution, that's pretty bad," von Tetzchner said.

"We've done a fair amount of work to make Opera Mini run well on the Blackberry, and we'd do the same thing for the iPhone."

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