newspeak

My colleague, Peter Kelly, pointed us to this article (actually, a reference to this one). It’s rather interesting and, like Peter, I’m interested to see what develops—and see this as, so far, a positive change.

Back at CollabNet, when we had to draft webpages for sites, we’d have to put in the exceptions for Netscape 4 (Sun had standardised on it, as had so many) and IE. Tedium. But also more than that. Recall that South Korea’s ecommerce infrastructure, as well as much of its public government, has standardised on increasingly obsolete—embarrassingly, dangerously obsolete—IE. And by dint of contract and law (and oligarchy, I suppose, as well as momentum: boredom) is stuck with the kind of past only a grave robber would love.

Inside Microsoft’s New Rendering Engine For The “Project Spartan” – Smashing Magazine.