And, as usual with Joel, he gets right to (as we like to put it) the very important bit -- *why* Microsoft felt the need to come up with hasLayout, and whether there was another way to get to where they wanted to go (based on the number of browsers without it; clearly, yes) -- and he handwaves.

The simple fact is, there really are standards for HTML -- have been for a long time -- and the only people whom they screw are people who married Microsoft early on.  You lay down with dogs...

I don't think I've ever, in fact, heard web developers use those epithets about FF or Opera.. though admittedly, you probably talk to more of them than I do.

At least Joel seems to understand that Office 2007 is right out.  That's certainly what my normal humans on the street tell me.

I use OpenOffice, myself.  ;-) 

Methinks you missed the point of the article entirely. A standard isn't a standard unless everyone follows it. The fact of the matter is that the winners write history and set standards. Netscape was the first to market, so they created a standard. Then Microsoft won the first browser wars, and they defined some standards. All the while the W3C was setting standards. Now all of the sudden you have multiple standards, and therefore none.

I personally think standards are a great thing. We try to follow all the W3C standards with WebGUI. However, we can't *just* follow them or WebGUI site's wouldn't work in Internet Explorer. And, by the way, our sites look and work better for the end user if we also adopt some of the firefox only extensions to CSS, and also some of the Safari only extensions to the "standard". What it comes down to is that we, like the rest of the world, can only stick with standards until it affects our users in a negative way, then we have to compromise.

Joel may have a Microsoft bias, but so do you and I. His bias is irrelevant to this discussion. The discussion isn't about anything that Microsoft does. It's about doing what's practical vs doing what is ideal. And those lessons apply far beyond the boundries of the Microsoft world. 

PS. Not only have I heard bad things about FF, Opera, and Safari in addition to IE, I've also personally said them. There isn't a browser out there that's perfect. But if I had to make a prediction about which browser will win this new browser war, I'd say Safari/Webkit/Konquerer has a better shot to dethrone IE tan FF does.