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c0lo [soylentnews.org] writes:

In a bad turn of karma for Microsoft's "embrace and extend" approach to the web in the early 2000s, I see it as deliciously ironic Microsoft's announce [msdn.com] that it has to change its standards-based IE11 browser to make the mobile version work better with non-standard websites. As ZDNET comments [zdnet.com]:

Web developers have been complaining for years about having to fix their websites to handle non-standard versions of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Now the boot is on the other foot. Microsoft is having to change its standards-based IE11 browser to make the mobile version work better with non-standard websites.

Microsoft says it tested "more than 500 of the top mobile web sites" when developing the Windows Phone 8.1 Update, and it has improved about 40 percent of them, including Twitter.
It found that the main issues were (quote):

• Faulty browser detection not recognising IE as a mobile browser and giving the desktop experience
• Using only old webkit-prefixed features that have been replaced by standards [submitters note: can't repress a hint of a schadenfreude feeling]
• Using proprietary webkit-prefixed features for which there is no standard
• Using features that IE does not support with no graceful fall-back
• Running into interoperability bugs and implementation differences in IE

Well, schadenfreude or not, it's actually a pity there still are Web designers/developers that ignore the W3C standards now that the majority of browsers support them [wikipedia.org]

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Original Submission