The Web Standards Project has released an open letter petition in an attempt to increase the pressure on Microsoft to adopt a policy of 100 percent compliance for W3C standards in its next generation of its Internet browser.

The WSP is requesting that Internet developers sign and return an e-mail letter to the organization requesting that Microsoft support Cascading Style Sheets Level-1, HTML 4.0, DOM 1.0 and XML 1.0 in the next version of Internet Explorer. The letter is located here.

Non-compliant browsers, as they exist now, are claimed by the organization to cause the following problems, prompting the petition:

• Add 25 percent to the cost of building sites due to workarounds and extra debugging
• Prevent sites from using advanced features that would provide a richer and more useful experience for site visitors
• Threaten to fragment the Web, especially as browsers move beyond the desktop

The letter states, in part, "Microsoft's support for these standards has been far superior to Netscape's, but that will change when Netscape releases Navigator 5.0, which appears headed toward fulfilling its promise of 100 percent support for these standards, according to independent reports."

WSP also presented Microsoft with a Web standards petition signed by more than 1,000 Web developers. The organization claims this is the first step in a campaign by WSP asking Web site owners, developers and visitors to call Microsoft to fully support key Web standards in its next release of Internet Explorer.

More information is available here.