Internet Explorer 8 will support web standards by default

Filed under: Internet, Microsoft, web 2.0

Internet Explorer 8 will support web standards by default

by Christina Warren Mar 4th 2008

Back in January, Microsoft caused quite a stir when they announced that the default behavior of Internet Explorer 8 would be to render web pages the same way as they are rendered in IE 7. The problem with this? One of IE 8's most touted features is its web standards compliance and its passing of the Acid2 test. However, web developers and standards advocates were miffed at the idea that rendering the "correct" way would require an additional line of code.

Well, it looks like Microsoft is listening. Yesterday they announced that the default browser behavior will be to render according to standards. If sites want to render in the "quirks" mode (thus, look the same as it would look in IE 7), the site maintainers will need to add in a line of code to reflect that.

The rationale from the original decision stems from the problems Microsoft had when migrating from IE 6 to IE 7. IE 7 had to sacrifice standards compliance in order to deal with rendering problems held over from IE 6. Thus, a web page that was built around IE 6's weirdness would look horrendous in IE 7, despite actually being displayed "properly." Thus, Microsoft made the decision to work out a way to render older sites without the appearance of breakage.

By changing course, Microsoft joins other browser makers like Safari, Firefox and Opera is operating with standards compliance out of the box. We have to give Microsoft credit for at least listening to the response from the community.

[via Webware]

Tags: ie8, internet explorer, InternetExplorer, standards, web standards, WebStandards

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

kabura said 1:47PM on 3-04-2008

Finally!

GoOrange said 2:26PM on 3-04-2008

About time. I'll be glad to see IE7 go. Nice to see they are coming around and embracing standards although it's disturbing that they were considering not doing so early on.

Eric H said 2:27PM on 3-04-2008

My firefox doesn't pass the Acid2 test.

Radical Dreamer said 3:16PM on 3-04-2008

IT'S ABOUT TIME!!!!

James said 4:14PM on 3-04-2008

I'm not sure this is a great idea. Now any old web page that doesn't have a maintainer is going to break. The "correct" way to do this from a software engineering standpoint is, when your data doesn't specify what version of the program it expects to be loaded in, ask the user, or at least choose a default and let the user change the option at their discretion. I for one would probably run my IE in Standards Mode all the time, and mock the dumb bastards that hacked up their site to be IE6 or IE7 compliant, but it would be nice to at least have the *option* to set quirks mode from the client side.

kingkool68 said 8:05PM on 3-04-2008

Hooray! Now we just need to get IE6 outta here. IE7 wasn't very bad.

Barry Cleave said 7:34AM on 3-05-2008

Pressure from all sorts of directions: Consumers, Governments (EU, etc.). States in the USA, commercial organisations seem to be having an effect on MS in complying with standards and releasing details to allow other developers to properly integrate products. I hope this continues!

Barry
http://proreviewer.com

Joshua Issac said 12:30PM on 4-05-2008

It's a shame Microsoft is abandoning their own standards and following the W3C's. Why can't they just put a "Standards Tab" icon like Firefox's "IE tab". At this rate, Microsoft will convince me to switch to Firefox (only joking!).

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