In obvious and heavy-handed arrogance, Microsoft locked out every browser there is except for Internet Explorer and MSNExplorer on October 25, 2001 from MSN.COM, a popular portal site soley owned by Microsoft. AOL Time Warner filed an immediate request to have this brought before the antitrust judges currently deliberating how to punish Mircrosoft for their illegal business practices and for illegally maintaining a monopoly. The 'Net community reacted instantly in condemning Microsoft for the lockout. Microsoft initially responded that the site only locked out inferior browsers such as Netscape and Opera which do not properly parse HTML 4, CSS2, and XML (XHTML). They further stated that only browsers capable of properly parsing the new pages in full compliance with accepted 'Net weblanguages would be allowed in, and that only their browsers were able to do this.
Opera, maker of the newly popular Opera browser, responded by running exhaustive tests that prove conclusively that their browsers are fully compliant and that the pages on the MSN.COM site are not fully HTML 4, CSS2 nor XML (XHTML) compliant. Numerous errors were reported. This E.Zine also performed tests and found all of Opera's claims to be true. Opera does a superior job on virtually all fronts, and has a superior implementation of both CSS2 and XML (XHTML) to Internet Explorer and MSNExplorer. When viewing MSN.COM in Internet Explorer, the pages rendered flawlessly, though when using other browsers (with technically superior rendering), the pages exhibited numerous flaws in placement of text and alignment. Because the browsers rendering the pages as flawed are technically superior, this proves Microsoft lied.
In related areas, MSN.COM now causes many Netscape browsers to crash when viewing the site. This is a very old problem with code that is overly optimized for Internet Explorer only and further points out that the code on the MSN.COM site is not in compliance. It's very obvious that Microsoft lied from the beginning about this lockout and that the sole purpose of it was to make surfers disenchanted with other browsers. No doubt, this is related to Netscape's and Opera's successes at insinuating themselves into the embedded appliance and intranet market as the browser of choice. Netscape and Opera now dominate this rapidly growing share of the browser market, with Opera being the preferred browser for Linux intranets. Netscape is the preferred browser for embedded appliances.
The special script used to lockout non MS browsers has since been removed and all browsers may now visit MSN.COM - though the code needs serious reworking as it malfunctions fiercely in Opera and Netscape and is not compliant. Hopefully the Microsoft webdesigners will figure out how to write in real HTML 4, CSS2, and XML (XHTML) and fix their badly coded pages soon.
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