Conformance to Standards (Special Characters in MSIE)

[Guest]

From:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/online-preface.html

"We normally test with the latest build of Mozilla.
If some of the special characters above look wrong,
your browser has bugs in its standards-conformance
and you should replace it."

This last line suggests that Microsoft Internet Explorer 6
does not support the standard for special characters.

Is this true?

If so, What is the reasoning behind its non-conformance?

In either case, Is there some means of rendering these
characters as the author intended using a plug-in for MSIE?

Thanks in advance!

 

[C. A. Upsdell]

From:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/online-preface.html

"We normally test with the latest build of Mozilla.
If some of the special characters above look wrong,
your browser has bugs in its standards-conformance
and you should replace it."

This means that the designer is either (a) lazy, because one can always use
numeric character references for special characters, and/or (b) does not
care about the many people who do not yet use a Gecko-based browser.

This last line suggests that Microsoft Internet Explorer 6

does not support the standard for special characters.

Is this true?

No browser supports all standards fully. IE used to be ahead of all other
browsers; with the release of Mozilla 1.0, IE is now behind. And because
one should design pages for all browsers -- not just Mozilla -- one should
design pages that degrade gracefully where standards are not yet fully
supported.

If so, What is the reasoning behind its non-conformance?

Two reasons. First, IE6 is older than Mozilla, and has been stagnant since
IE6 came out, whereas Mozilla is being constantly updated to bring it more
in accordance with the various standards. Second, Microsoft's policy is not
to support standards unless its customers demand it.

In either case, Is there some means of rendering these
characters as the author intended using a plug-in for MSIE?

I don't believe so. OTOH you might try Mozilla, or one of its siblings:
you might like it!