beso - I do hope that you are not talking about me when you when you write "I do get tired of those who trot out trite extremely dated statements about Microsoft products based on little more than their own biased, underinformed opinion or something they heard from antiMicrosoft zealots."?
Features and Standards are completely different. IE browsers DO NOT conform to the < a href-"http://www.w3schools.com/">W3 Schools</a> web standards. Firefox, <i>et al</i>, however do. Try validating the standards from the W3 site.