IE Standards Conformance

T.L. wrote:
> Dear Microsoft people,
>
> please, I am begging you, please make the Internet Explorer conform to all
> the WC3 standards soon.
> Up to now your browser is still giving me a huge headache every time I
> develop a new web page.
> It's very (very!) frustrating that 50% of all development time for an
> arbitrary html page is lost making this page work on IE after it already
> works on all the other browsers out there.
> Just to get the point right: I develop it once and it works on all the
> browsers just like that, except on the IE. And for the IE I have to
> practically redevelop it and confuse all my clean code.
>
> This has to stop somewhere. I am begging you.

I agree that IE should comply with standards, but my experience is that
far less than 50% of my time must be spent making current versions of IE
render pages reasonably: 5% or less, and much of that time is coping
with IE 5.

Also, even if IE8 were to comply 100% today, people will continue to use
older versions for several years at least, so a standards-compliant IE8
will not create instant nirvana.