Down, but not out according to this article from The Web Standards Project. It looks as if this browser could still have some life left in it, depending on how Microsoft wants to run with its updating scheme for it. As of this minute, I think they have a good start, but still have a long way to go.

A quick clarification on Molly’s otherwise excellent post on Microsoft’s fear of updating IE: Mr. Schare doesn’t preclude improvements to IE’s standards support altogether. Indeed, neither Molly nor Tristan say otherwise — though my slow brain did get that impression at first.

The truth is, Mr. Schare says quite the opposite:

Right now we’re aiming for Longhorn for that because we think it affords us the opportunity to say, “Okay a few things have changed, if you want your apps to work with Longhorn you may have to make a few changes.” Versus just blanket upgrading the installed base with some new features, and “Oh by the way we broke a bunch of stuff.”

That’s an encouraging statement, if a bit disappointing. On the one hand, it means Microsoft is going to update IE’s standards support. So far as I know, that’s the first time we’ve gotten a commitment to updated standards support from Microsoft. Yay!

On the other, it means we’re going to have to wait unitl 2006 for Longhorn to get it, and we’re likely going to have to wait much longer for even a slim majority of Windows users to upgrade, because Mr. Schare has effectively ruled out rendering engine improvements before then. Drat.