Now…according to the article in the Ottawa Citizen about this, it will take nearly three minutes for the signal to travel from the earth to the source.  I guess instant messaging and real time communication are somehow out of the question.

What was interesting, is that the key technological hurdle needing to be overcome is the ability for a signal to be smart and be able to deal with disruptions and connection problems.  The new concept is called “Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN.  If a signal is blocked, the server can sense this, can save the content and send it on when the way is clear.”   We are constantly building web applications that rely on communication with other systems, sometimes asynchronously.  While there are mechanisms that can deal with disruption to a certain extent, this concept is interesting in that one could be sure that a transmission would arrive eventually, even if the system accepting the message isn’t available immediately.

I’ll be interested to see if this is one of those space program advances that actually helps us on earth, or if its just a cool idea that doesn’t yield any practical application.

First, some background for anyone that isn’t aware. Microsoft announced how IE8 would attempt to avoid the problems caused by the launch of IE7 which coincided with the publication of two articles on A List Apart: Aaron Gustafson’s explanation of the idea and Eric Meyer’s discussion of his personal reaction. Subsequently, some people’s heads exploded. I strongly suggest you read the articles (and their ensuing comments) to get appraised of the situation before continuing on here.

There seems to be a lot of backlash to the idea and yet I don’t find myself that upset or opposed. I can’t really figure out who it is that is so negatively affected. In order to make sure I wasn’t just missing something, I started to look at the stakeholders in this decision and how they would be impacted.

Users

The whole purpose of this work by Microsoft is to ensure that average web users are the least affected by future versions of their browser. If everyone involved in creating and presenting web sites continue to do their job properly, this group will remain blissfully unaware of any changes taking place behind the scenes. Web sites that work for them will keep on working. Impact: none.

Companies with Web Sites (e.g. MARSWorks clients)

When a company has a site designed and developed for them, they expect that a certain experience be conveyed to the user. They want their target audience to be treated to their message the way they intended it. It falls (as it always has) to those of us building the sites to make this happen. Impact: none.

Web Developers – Amateur

I’m thinking here of people content to create sites by letting rudimentary WYSIWYG tools do the heavy lifting. I’d also include those who are oblivious to (or even against) the web standards movement. Nothing about this IE8 announcement changes anything for them that wasn’t already changed by IE7. Quirks mode will still be Quirks mode and table layouts will (unfortunately) still continue to work. Impact: none.

Web Developers – Intermediate

This level of developer probably uses a proper DOCTYPE and is in some stage of transitioning to being more web standards-aware. They may never know about the X-UA-Compatible declaration and so they will be safe in that IEx will always just fall back to IE7 for their sites. Impact: none.

Web Developers – Advanced

This is the category in which I place myself and basically anyone else who’s actually following this issue. Where I diverge from what seems to be the prevailing opinion is that I don’t think this will change my job much at all. It won’t involve making any changes to sites already in existence because I know they work in IE7 and that’s how they’ll be rendered forevermore by virtue of not using the new X-UA-Compatible declaration. As IE8 becomes more of a reality, I’ll start including the new <meta> tag however I need to in order to have my site look correct. This is nothing new. We’ve all been using hacks, fixes, and conditional comments to do the same thing for what feels like ages. Sure, I’d love it if I never had to work around a browser’s inadequacies again but that’s not realistic. Putting another tool in my kit really doesn’t sound like much of a price to pay. Impact: minimal.

Microsoft

Internet Explorer is actually handcuffed by two things that should be major selling points: their history and their massive install base. IE7 “broke the web” because it behaved like a standards based browser instead of IE6, which a lot of people didn’t understand. Now they have to try to be everything to everyone: IE5.5/Quirks mode for legacy support; IE7 for decently/recently developed sites; IE8/IE9/IEedge… for the future. I actually think that their solution is a pretty good one considering the situation they find themselves in. Whether or not this is a viable position going forward remains to be seen… Impact: significant, especially for the future.

Other Browser Vendors

If I were a Mozilla or an Opera, I wouldn’t worry about this in the slightest. In fact, this might prove to be a major win for the other browsers in the long run. I’ve been reading that people think that this spells the end of progressive enhancement. It seems to me that what it actually does is move progressive enhancement squarely into the field of non-IE browsers. Savvy web developers and savvy browser makers will continue to push each other to use the latest tools and technologies available. I’ll keep including progressive enhancement in the sites I build and the browsers (and users) that stay current will benefit. Just like before. Users may eventually start to realize that sites look better in Firefox than IE and switch… Impact: none (possibly positive?).

So, after all this, what am I saying? Effectively, Microsoft is being forced to lie in the bed they made. To their credit, though, I think they’re handling the issue in a way that’s perfectly acceptable and makes the best of what they have to deal with.

I’m sure that much more will be said on this topic before it’s all over and I may even change my mind but for now I’m willing to take the fact that the community is having this dialog as a win.

Addendum

I read Who loses out to X-UA-Compatible? over at Morethanseven while this post was in draft and was surprised by the similarity to this article. This was by no means an act of plagiarism, just two minds thinking alike.