zelph.com

Much has been said and discussed about the recent update to the homepage of Microsoft.com. They have moved to a much more css/xhtml driven site, although they are not all the way there yet. More specific details can be found in other articles, but I just wanted to make sure to give one more lowly blog’s kudos for the progress made.

Eric Meyer writes the exact article that I wanted to, and says what I was thinking. Loud and boisterous kudos should be given for the steps taken. Yes we can quitely point to things that may have been missed, but it should not be held over their heads as wrong doings.

Sprint is often given praise as an example of a big company doing great things with CSS and XHTML, and for that we are appreciative. But our homepage, and the recent business section release aside, a large section of our site does not validate. That’s not through lack of trying or desire, but the existing structure of our Content Maintenance System, doesn’t allow us the full control that we would like to ahceive validation. While the higher ups have drunk from the standards kool-aid, they weren’t willing to put in the extra time and money it would take to do a bottom up overhaul of the engine driving our site. Especially since they already spend untold amounts of money getting it in place as it is.

With that in mind, I have no idea what hurdles Microsoft had to overcome to even get as far as they did. Maybe the remaining issues are ones that they have no choice but to leave for now and will address at a later time, just as we hope to do at Sprint. But they decided to get the best they could out the door as a sign of good faith or of things to come.

So once again, kudos to Microsoft for the great step forward they have made. May it continue to permeate into the rest of their site, and may they find a way past their current “small” issues soon.