I love America. I was born and raised here and I do have national pride, but one area of frustration that I’ve had as long as I can remember is that America doesn’t conform to standards. I spent 2 years in Germany and when I would talk to my family at home about the weather the inevitable question would be, “how hot is that in Fahrenheit?” When I would describe the places I was working in the question was, “how far is that in miles?”

You may be of a different opinion, but I don’t understand why America hasn’t conformed to metric standards. In fact, I’ve decided that this is one way that Internet Explorer is just like America, the both feel that they are the standard—their not—let me tell you, there’s a reason why us geeks make and maintain consistoriums!

Now, I’m all for pushing the envelop and developing new standards. You see Apple setting the bar for mobile phones, but you, Microsoft, you continue to disappoint. I admit that have a glimmer of hope for IE9, but I’ve been disappointed before. You told us that standards would be supported in IE7, they weren’t. We were told that IE8 would support standards, not really. In the tests that I’ve done with IE9 I’ve only noticed a few smaller problems (and that was when using jQuery or with CSS3) so you’re starting off on a better foot.

So, while I think that America is great, I sure do get frustrated with them. And while I get frustrated with you, IE, I can’t really say you’re great. But since I’m a pragmatist, and I’ve been known to to change my views before, I’m willing to work with you again, but you must understand that this will be a tenuous relationship. I don’t know if I can live with you if your next iteration turns out to be as bad as the rest of your lot.

What are your thoughts? What do you want to see in IE9? What has disappointed you in the past with IE?