Microsoft is known for declaring and enforcing their own technology 'standards', rather than observing the well-formed standards that have been agreed upon by others. This creates a divide (and, hence, the lack of a
true standard) in nearly every sector of the tech industry they touch.
Today, I needed to install Internet Explorer (IE) 7 on a Windows machine in order to test some front-end code against this new browser, which, unfortunately, is a necessary step since the IE line is notoriously standards-resistant and IE7 has a growing user base.
After a quick Google search, I found myself at the
Internet Explorer Home Page (which, for the geeks out there, doesn't declare a doctype). On that page, the following link caught my eye:
Well, this will either be enlightening or highly entertaining, I thought. So I clicked the link, which leads to a .ASX file -- If you don't know what a .ASX file is, that makes two of us. I was then met with the following:
As you can see, Microsoft's Windows Media Player, running under Microsoft Windows XP, attempted to open a file that's in some sort of Microsoft 'standard' format, from Microsoft's website -- and failed! I figured there was an off chance that Firefox, the one non-Microsoft part of this equation, was causing the problem, so I tested it in IE6. And it failed again. I'm LOLing, but they're LOLing all the way to the bank.
Microsoft, if you're going to try to ignore standards and dictate your own, at least get your $#!+ working first.
Labels: microsoft, technology, web
