My favourite CSS resourse site, QuirksMode has recently updated their CSS compatibility tables for CSS3 and the egarly-anticipated-by-the-people-who like-the-current-version-of-the-worlds-worst-browser (IE7) Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 and as far as I can see, IE6 is better.

M$ took a huge leap backwards when they released IE7 and a lot of people who ‘upgraded’ were unfortunately unsure of where to get a copy of IE6 from. A lot of the boffins stuck with IE6 because they knew where to get copies as M$ removed it from their own website.

Anyway, M$ IE8 looks to be even more of a disappointment than Vista was. Take a look at the compatibility tables for CSS3 with IE8 here. I have also added a screen grab to show how bad it was at the time of writing. The red highlighted area is all flavors of IE.

Out of the 24 CSS3 selectors tested, only a total of 4 were supported in any version of IE and of these frighteningly bad 4 out of 24 passes, IE8 has broken 2 bringing the total failures up to 22/24! All the other unsupported features for all the other 6 browsers only totaled 20 across all the tests. This means that IE has 10% more problems than every other major browser combined. What are M$ playing at?!

Not only that, but I have been reading up on M$ Windows 7 and what a heap it sounds. For example, I read somewhere that you won’t be able to install it on a machine like we have been able to do since the early 90s. Windows 7 and all its application will be run from a remote M$ server to aid the legality battle that M$ is always facing with new copies of Windows. This is ok on a desktop (if you actually want to spend money on an operating system in 2 years times that is as good as Mac OS was about 3 years ago!) but what happens when you’re out up Mount Kilimangaro and want to write a diary entry using the aforementioned Windows 7? Oops, you can’t because you won’t be able to access a M$ server. And what about everyone in deepest darkest Peru for example. Would they be sitting next to a tree with an Ethernet port? I think not…

M$ seems to have lost the plot and are now just focusing on trying to control such a large percentage of the worlds computers. Linux seems to be clawing its way down from the bottom of the geek pool to become a trusted and viable operating system.

Dear M$, I can’t wait to insult your best attempts at making a browser that is at least 25% CSS2 compliant let alone CSS3…