Puzzling Event:

I was abruptly wakened from my pleasant dreams by the sound of my computer rebooting. (On my somewhat "mature" system, the steam boiler makes a lot of noise at times, and the gears have a couple of teeth missing, so the wakeup wasn't too surprising.)

I suddenly find that the "IE has modified this page to protect you" flag no longer appears for the two or three mudcat threads I've opend thus far.

The reboot wasn't unexpected, since a rather large number of updates had been indicated for the monthly Microsoft update scheduled for now. (17 patches, ties the last previous record for number of patches in a single release.) The news reports haven't indicated much detail on exactly what was to be patched, and specifically didn't mention any changes to IE9. I haven't (yet) checked to see what was installed that might have affected IE.

IE9 release was almost precisely two months ago, and the "early report" this morning is that a "concepts pre-beta" of IE10 has just appeared. Although Microsoft hasn't given any indication of when a "working beta" or finished release might happen, it doesn't appear that it will be immediately.

The brief article reporting the latest (IE10) news(?) indiates that Chrome, Firefox, Mozilla releases have been at approximately two month intervals for each, for the last several updates. I haven't watched release history of all the other browsers, but have noted some comment about inconsistent behavior changes in most of them.

Much of the recent browser activity has been based on claims of "improved compliance" with HTML5, CSS3, and CSS5, none of which, it appears, is actually a firm standard. HTML5 in particular was issued as a "final pre-publication version for comment" more than two years ago. The "final pre-pub" version has been revised and re-issued at least twice, and nobody is predicting release with actual status as "Standard" for at least the next couple of years.

I'm not a bit surprised that those managing web servers are having some difficulties, as there are no confirmable targets to aim at, and everything that resembles a target keeps moving, or disappearing, with new pseudo-requirements appearing at random.

Herding cats in the parking lot at a mega-mall, or running a chicken roundup in a jungle, would be easier than what Max is trying to do for us.

Thanks again, Max.

John