Tony Patton is a clever guy who writes for TechRepublic. He writes the ASP.NET column that I read frequently and he recently posted an editorial titled: When will Microsoft fully embrace Web standards?
His musing was targetted at specific Microsoft applications such as SharePoint 2007 and Outlook 2007. Although I partially agree with his points, I feel that he is missing the main point of distinction: SharePoint is an application - not the web. Shown below are my thoughts that I also posted to the discussion of the blog entry.
Discussion Post:
I really like Tony's columns, but this one has a few points which are not entirely related to one another.
SharePoint is not the web, nor is it simply a website. SharePoint is an application. It is a powerful and highly configurable application that integrates with desktop applications (MS Office), back office applications (Dynamics/CRM), mail servers (Exchange) and yes, even Internet Explorer. Since SharePoint sites/portals are generally secured to only company employees or partners, the environment in which they run is essentially controlled/contained. Unfortunately, much of the integration required by this application is beyond the scope of W3C standards. That doesn't justify the point, but it does clarify it a bit.
Given their past, I know that it is easy to vilify Microsoft in the quest for a standard web. But Tony touched on Microsoft's effort with his mentioning of the rich standards support in VS2005 and Expression Web. The HTML editor in VS2005 will tell you if you are using an element or attribute that is out-dated or deprecated from the current standard. You can also choose to have your entire site examined for WCAG and if you have a violation of WCAG, it will tell you the WCAG section as well as instruct you as to what you must do to correct it. Also, all Microsoft provided ASP.NET 2.0 server controls emit standards compliant markup.
The bottom line is this; SharePoint and Outlook are applications - not the web. Although they use HTML, there is a significant difference. Standards have their place and are a very good thing, and when it comes to providing standards compliant tools for developers, Microsoft has made tremendous improvements.