Web Devout tidings

The latest alpha version of Firefox has been labeled “feature complete,” meaning no significant changes are planned for the webpage layout engine. In response, I have added the Firefox 2.0 information to the Web browser standards support resource. According to my information so far, there have been no significant changes to the areas currently covered in the standards support resource. However, since there were changes to SVG support and I hope to add SVG information to the tables eventually, I have decided to list Firefox 2.0 separately from Firefox 1.5.

Opera 9 information will be added when the public builds are labeled “feature complete” or an equivalent. Opera is known to make significant changes even in the final beta versions, so it’s possible that I will be unable to begin thorough testing until the final version of Opera 9 is released.

Chris Wilson, Group Program Manager of the Internet Explorer Platform team at Microsoft, on his weblog has promised to fight for standards support as Internet Explorer development continues.

From the post:

Yes, I have the power to enact change. Yes, I will continue to improve standards support and compliance in IE, and make the web better. That’s my job, my charter, my vision, and my passion. The day it isn’t, I’ll quit. The day the development of the standards-based platform in IE goes on a back burner again, I’ll quit. My management up to and including Bill Gates has said we are back in the saddle with IE, so I have a job to get back to.

The post also addresses some criticism of the Web Standards Project (WaSP) about their recent change in relationship with the Internet Explorer development team. Wilson found the claims that WaSP was selling out to be “first snortingly funny, and then fairly offensive”.

Chris Wilson has been perhaps the most vocal web standards proponent on the Internet Explorer development team. He has been fairly open about the browser’s shortcomings and has made efforts to get feedback from the web development community regarding future development.

Google, the current leading web search engine, has begun advertising the Firefox web browser on its front page. The ad encourages visitors to download Firefox with the Google toolbar, and currently appears to only be targetting Internet Explorer users.

Google has long been a supporter of Mozilla Firefox, and has employed several Mozilla developers including Ben Goodger, Darin Fisher, Brian Ryner, and Mike Pinkerton to work in Google’s own Firefox development team. They have also developed a number of Firefox extensions and provide a service that pays website owners to specifically advertise Firefox on their websites.

The Google front page receives a tremendous amount of traffic, and the fact that it is currently being used to promote a leading browser in standards compliance is a very good thing for the health of the Web.

Update: Currently, only visitors in the United States are shown the advertisement.

Here is a screenshot of the advertisement:

Update: The advertisement appears to be up or down at different times for different people. If you don’t see it, it may come up for you later.

Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 is now available for download. The previous release was a preview of this beta. Although the version that was released in March was announced to be “layout complete”, meaning that no significant additional rendering engine changes would be made until the final release, Beta 2 is now considered “feature complete”, meaning the user interface also isn’t expected to receive any more changes.

The official blog post on the release alludes to new changes in “some CSS behaviors”, but none of the public bug reports that I am tracking have yet been marked as fixed. I will retest the support of some of the areas most likely to be addressed once the final version of Internet Explorer 7 is released or if the bug reports’ statuses change.

Opera 9.0 Beta 1 has been released. This version includes significant improvements to the layout engine, as well as several new user interface features and support for BitTorrent downloads. An official changelog is available.