Molly Holzshlag wrote on WaSP's recent buzz about recent meetings with Microsoft.
The bottom line? We're talking, Microsoft is listening.
I remember when the WaSP was founded, back in 1998, it made as much noise as possible in order to get Netscape and Microsoft to support Web standards in their respective browsers. They were right in doing so. Mozilla has listened, and its Gecko engine is doing very well with regards to Web standards. I am so convinced that the WaSP in right in promoting Web standards that I translated its mission statement into French, a couple of years ago. Then I started OpenWeb, a French Web-standards resource on Web standards.
7 years after its beginning, the WaSP is finally getting heard by Microsoft. This is very good news. I just hope that we won't have to wait another 7 years before they move from listening mode to action mode. In the meantime, I strongly suggest Web users to rely on a modern Web browsers. Whether it's proprietary or Open-Source, running on Mac, Windows or Linux, the only things that matter are its standards-compliance and the fact that it fits the user's specific needs.
Molly suggests in her blog post that the Microsoft employees she met with (respectively Product Manager for the Web Tools team and lead Program Manager for the Web Platform in Internet Explorer) want standards to happen in Microsoft products.
Sitting face to face with Brian and Chris, it's certainly clear to me that these are colleagues who not only get the importance of standards compliance, but want it badly, too.
I certainly hope that some key Microsoft employees are willing to support Web standards in their products. I'm just not sure that the Microsoft management will let them do it. The upcoming beta version of IE7 should demonstrate serious commitment to standards, for example.
You may find me harsh with what I expect from Microsoft. But in the past, I know there used to be Microsoft employees fighting internally for Web standards. The last one I heard of, Tantek Celik, has left Microsoft just one year ago. Now, Tantek contemplates the idea of helping Open-Source browser engines... So I doubt that Microsoft will play nicely in the Web Standards space, but I hope I'm wrong. It appears that I'm not the only one to doubt: see Brady's and Pete's comments on Molly's post.
