And now it’s time for ‘Let’s all pick on Microsoft!’

In fact there is an “interesting” page on the Microsoft website that seems to address this issue in a tangental way. This page talks about something called “layout” but fails to explain what it is, or why such a thing exists in the first place. Apparently giving a dimension to a box is one of the ways to trigger “layout” in that box, so it’s clear that Microsoft deliberately designed their browser to behave in this strange way. Regardless of the reasoning, when a box lacks “layout” it is vulnerable to many weird bugs, and when the box has “layout” it causes the browser to violate several W3C specifications. Considering that this “layout” is not part of the W3C specs, one wonders what the heck is going on at Microsoft.