I carry no brief in the eternal OS flamewar. Actually, I happen to be one of the few Windows users in a predominantly Mac shop. It's just a tool, and for whatever combination of reasons, tastes and experiences, it happens to be the one that works for me.

I front this fact because I'm about to tell an old, old story. Dante wrote this story. Homer sang this story. The Song of Solomon -- so some scholars will tell you -- is really about this story.

The story: Microsoft fail.

Now, we often urge, even implore, user organizations not to set up their web content in Microsoft Word. I think we're sometimes suspected of upholding some arcane creed of geek purity. Not a bit of it: the reason is that Microsoft is blissfully indifferent to web standards other than its arbitrary own. It would be a profligate waste of programming resources to retrofit everything, especially when there are so many ways to compose good (even merely mediocre) HTML.

Well, once upon a time -- that is, this afternoon -- in a land far, far away -- that is, in the support ticket queue -- a brave progressive organization was trying to turn visitors out to its event.

But the visitors had a problem.

Over forest and glen them came; through fire and floods they came; they braved the elements; they bested their foes; and when they arrived, arrayed in glory, the web registration page was totally broken.

It turns out, it had been built with Microsoft stuff: copies of copies, handed down from ancient e-mail blasts, said the Old Ones. Though it looked like a fine web site on the outside, it concealed a deep and terrible secret within: strange and terrible tags, like w:PunctuationKerning, and o:smarttagtype, dreadful to behold. It was the Dorian Gray of registration forms.

These dark arts (wond'rous to tell) were powerless against most web browsers. Those who rode Firefox and Chrome found the city (er, the page) bountiful, and glorious, and thither did they click.

But one web browser could not pass:

Internet Explorer.

And so it was that Microsoft's browser was blasted with confusion by Microsoft's own code, in fulfillment of the Book of Irony.

See this timeless myth updated (like those modern Shakespeare takes) coming soon to a big (or at least, laptop-sized) screen near you soon: