In this case, the standard reduced interoperability. As a general point you're correct of course, but you need to consider the context and specific situation.
No one implemented standards back then, and IE WAS the de-facto "standard" as it had something like ~98% market share. I'm not saying standards should have been made bug-compatible with IE or even that they should have gone out of their way to accommodate IE, but a "CSS 2.2" cold have updated stuff like the box model which was 1) actually better (or, at the least, equivalent), and 2) a huge pain for everyone.
It would have reduced headaches for everyone, and would have been a lot easier than changing every website. Especially non-IE users would have benefited: the people who suffered the most from this weren't the IE users and devs who only cared about IE, they were the Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox and Opera people and devs who cared about them. One has to wonder if uptake of things like Firefox or Opera wouldn't have been much faster in an alternative universe where these changes were made.
Mindlessly following standards just makes no sense. Also see GNU and POSIX_ME_HARDER/POSIXLY_CORRECT.
No one implemented standards back then, and IE WAS the de-facto "standard" as it had something like ~98% market share. I'm not saying standards should have been made bug-compatible with IE or even that they should have gone out of their way to accommodate IE, but a "CSS 2.2" cold have updated stuff like the box model which was 1) actually better (or, at the least, equivalent), and 2) a huge pain for everyone.
It would have reduced headaches for everyone, and would have been a lot easier than changing every website. Especially non-IE users would have benefited: the people who suffered the most from this weren't the IE users and devs who only cared about IE, they were the Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox and Opera people and devs who cared about them. One has to wonder if uptake of things like Firefox or Opera wouldn't have been much faster in an alternative universe where these changes were made.
Mindlessly following standards just makes no sense. Also see GNU and POSIX_ME_HARDER/POSIXLY_CORRECT.