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See the original image at arstechnica.com

Wisdom and folly: IE8's super standards mode cuts both ways

arstechnica.com — Microsoft plans for Internet Explorer 8 to be the most standards-compliant browser it has ever shipped. Problem is, it also needs to render the same pages old versions of IE can. Ars explores how Microsoft got into this predicament and the problems with IE8's solution: multiple rendering modes.

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  • wiifm69, on 01/25/2008, -20/+35By not forcing web developers to adhere to standards, you are pretty much guaranteeing the survival of animated gifs and everything else 1994.
    The worst thing is, it probably took 50 Microsoft employees several months to come up with this stupid idea. A meta tag - a ***** meta tag!
    • Cheesecrunch, on 01/25/2008, -4/+24"a meta tag - a ***** meta tag!"

      I haven't laughed that hard for days
      • Angostura, on 01/25/2008, -2/+21The amusing this is that it probably means IE8 will *never* pass the ACID2 test, since the ACID guys won't be embedding non-standard meta-tags in the test, I suspect.
        • midbc, on 01/26/2008, -3/+2i thought it did
        • rpgmaker, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2It doesn't matter for marketing purposes and even though this is a half-assed standard compliant IE its so much better than the one we got now, the thing is that I don't know why MS don't push the webdevelopers to embrace standards making the standard mode the default option, they can do this the same way they push their non-standars to us.
    • vofuse, on 01/25/2008, -13/+10"By not forcing web developers to adhere to standards, you are pretty much guaranteeing the survival of animated gifs and everything else 1994."

      You say that like it's a bad thing.
      • mfearby, on 01/25/2008, -0/+8Methinks you are really being sarcastic. At least, I hope so :-)
      • imakecomments, on 01/25/2008, -1/+3Come on... That was funny!
    • rderveloy, on 01/25/2008, -6/+22"The worst thing is, it probably took 50 Microsoft employees several months to come up with this stupid idea."

      Next time, RTFA.

      FTA: "The idea for this new tag was not developed by Microsoft in isolation. The company worked with the Web Standards Project (WaSP) to devise this mechanism, to allow the existing web to work, and the future web to be standards compliant."
      • jejones, on 01/25/2008, -9/+13Yes, and by doing so, WaSP, or rather, those members of WaSP involved, sold itself and web developers down the river, and made a laughing stock of the organization. All this does is let MS subvert the standards while paying lip service to them.
        • MicrosoftBob, on 01/26/2008, -3/+1What does Blackie Lawless have to do with web standards?
    • voetsjoeba, on 01/25/2008, -11/+7What's wrong with meta tags?
      • jejones, on 01/25/2008, -3/+24It shouldn't be necessary to add a non-standard tag to say you want the browser to conform to the standard.
        • sekhui, on 01/25/2008, -12/+2you don't know anything about how entrenched non-standards-compliant code is in big business/government intranets.
          • theaceoffire, on 01/25/2008, -4/+12We do, and they need to change.
          • spectecjr, on 01/26/2008, -6/+1Oh grow up. Are you going to pay for that change?
          • MWeather, on 01/26/2008, -1/+9Why should I pay? It's not my code. I didn't pay for Y2k, either, and I'd have been just as pissed if Microsoft made me opt-in to enable dates after 1999.
          • srg13, on 01/28/2008, -0/+3If they don't want to pay, then it's their problem -They use a buggy browser that works with their site if they want.
        • rpgmaker, on 01/26/2008, -0/+6Not to mention that IE will be bigger now since it will have two rendering engines. Come'on Microsoft, you can do better.
      • my8bird, on 01/29/2008, -1/+1META tags are standards complaint try learning.
    • FredFredrickson, on 01/25/2008, -7/+5What's wrong with animated GIF's again?
    • ElbertF, on 01/25/2008, -1/+4How many recourses will it use with three tabs open that use a different engine?
    • kidlinux, on 01/25/2008, -0/+8By not forcing developers to adhere to standards we'll always be stuck with the old IE way of doing things. Who's going to change their page to be more standards compliant if it still works with IE8?
      • steviepunk, on 01/26/2008, -0/+4At the end of the day, if there are a significant number of any browser out there, then a website needs to work for that browser (whether IE6, IE7, IE8, Safari, Opera, Firefox, etc).

        While you might get away with not supporting a browser for a personal website, if you develop sites commercially, then your clients just won't accept that 30% (ish) of web users can't access the site properly just because IE6 isn't standards compliant, you have to make sure they can view it as well.
        Seems to me that having a meta tag should at least help make it easier make sites work on the different versions or IE.

        Of course, it does put us in a bit of a vicious circle, however with any luck we'll see IE6 disappear properly as IE7 is freed of it's WGA requirement (and let's hope IE8 doesn't require WGA!)
  • aussieNickuss, on 01/25/2008, -8/+57"Microsoft plans for Internet Explorer 8 to be the most standards-compliant browser it has ever shipped."

    They won't have to try very hard. I wish MS would just use gecko or webkit and spend more time developing their other software that actually makes them money.
    • aussieNickuss, on 01/25/2008, -8/+12Which of course doesn't help the whole backwards-compatibility problem. (should have RTFA before commenting).
      • mithrasinvictus, on 01/25/2008, -8/+17Why should all web developers be punished for the ineptitude of those that should not have been allowed to call themselves web developers in the first place?
        Good developers have been designing to standards for years now, and making adjustments for bugs in specific browser versions. Now MS expects them to change all those old sites that did not count on the next version of IE being just as crappy as the old one?
        • fkr3, on 01/25/2008, -8/+11Good developers know how to make standards-complaint html and css that works in IE. They've had almost a decade to learn how it's done. Why should businesses pay for inept developers who after almost a decade still want to blame MS because they haven't managed to learn a finite and solved set of problems? HTML and CSS are the most basic tools of web development.... they teach that stuff in highschools.
          • ManOfVirtues, on 01/25/2008, -1/+12True, but we shouldn't have to write multiple style sheets, duplicate code, or yet another vicious gooey IE hack to do so.
        • Edan25, on 01/25/2008, -1/+1There is the web developers issue, and if you choose to ignore it, I say the web could've been better. No standard version AND IE version for each website, no hacks. Better websites, and, well, easier life for web developers.
        • smellinator, on 01/26/2008, -1/+1Folks, yer lookin' at this all wrong! The right answer that all web developers should support is that IE 8 should plan to *break the web*, with announcements that it will happen on 1/1/09 (or whatever)... so that we could have another Y2K-type event. Mass hysteria about business' websites potentially going "off the air"... leading to huge investments in I.T. spending, leading to a huge demand for IT people, leading to a huge bubble. Man, I miss the late '90's!
  • central183, on 01/25/2008, -3/+77This image basically sums it up for me: http://media.arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/ie8-s ...
    • zekard, on 01/25/2008, -2/+5In all fairness to Microsoft, running IE7 in strict mode has IE7 behaving a lot more like firefox 2.0 in terms of rendering. Of course there is still all the non-standard javascript stuff they do. But i think they are starting to get the point that they need to follow standards. For example, IE8 passes the ACID 2 test. My guess (and hope) is that IE8 will minimize code forking even more. (e.g., minimal or no hacks)
      • Edan25, on 01/25/2008, -0/+8Yeah, unfortunately, the damage has already been done.
    • zantos420, on 01/25/2008, -0/+11most people (clients) use IE6. winner of the worst web browser ever. I am a web developer and i stick to the standards but I can't even tell you how many CSS "hack" files I've had to make JUST for IE. Not to mention all the hours of cursing at IE and making empty threats at bill gates with my coworkers.
  • billread, on 01/25/2008, -17/+44The idea of sticking an MS only tag on a standards compliant web page just so it will do what it is supposed to do is absurdity. Why should developers help MS instead of the other way around?
    • daveisfera, on 01/25/2008, -7/+20And what is your proposition of how Microsoft is supposed to do that? As much as I hate IE, at least they admit they have painted themselves in a corner and are doing their best to get out.
      • vanscott, on 01/25/2008, -2/+8I laugh and cringe at the same time thinking about the developers working on IE 8. They probably would enjoy strangling the people who set them on this silly path 5-10 years ago.
        All things considered, this could be a whole lot worse. Best part is, it looks as is MS learned a lesson here and will hopefully look to standards instead of establishing their own.
        • nickj6282, on 01/25/2008, -2/+8That's a pipe dream at best. Microsoft doesn't do anything if it doesn't extend their Windows/Office monopoly. This move for IE8 is just another "Embrace, extend, extinguish".
      • NigmaE, on 01/25/2008, -10/+3Simple, they just need add a drop-down box to the toolbar allow users to choose one of the quirky renderers for the current website should it be neccessary. That way, we avoid any new and custom "made-for-IE8" tags, which is the logical way as the standard new mode is supposed to support is nothing new, in fact, it has always been the ONLY official standard.
        • daveisfera, on 01/25/2008, -0/+4You really want to be switching some stupid combo box every time you go to a website?
          • GMorgan, on 01/25/2008, -3/+4No, most of us will be using Firefox.
        • aussieNickuss, on 01/25/2008, -1/+2Joe Average doesn't know what standards are, or even what the hell HTML is, let alone being able to decide if they need to turn on standards mode or quirks mode.
          • MWeather, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1Joe Average knows all about standards, they just take them for granted. That's how you know a standard is working. The end user doesn't even notice it's there. It just works.
        • zwaldowski, on 01/25/2008, -1/+5You're right. They need to do it reverse: standards mode by default, with quirks by a special meta tag. IE7-style mode is useless; it's recent enough, developers should adapt for it.
          • spectecjr, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1You can't do it in reverse. You break existing pages that way.
        • dotnetnoob, on 01/26/2008, -0/+0wow! you take the word retard into the New level.
        • HonoredMule, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2Well actually, I'd love to be able to run a version of the latest IE that will ONLY render in the latest attempt at full standards compliance. Sure it may have no effect on government/business operations that are entrenched in IE 5.5/6, but it would make a nice strong statement to all commercial developers/websites.

          Don't write standards-compliant code for all browsers? That's ok, I can just browse elsewhere. This ass-backwards "tell me in a non-standard way if you want standards" method semi kills that dream.
      • stix213, on 01/29/2008, -0/+0How much do you want to bet that the new IE8 standards mode will just have its own quirks, and MS will just be in the same boat for IE9?
    • Bradl3y, on 01/25/2008, -4/+16Meta is not a MS only tag, and a meta tag for this purpose would still be valid and standards compliant as the meta tag is not limited as to what types of data it can contain.
      • FKnight, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2pwned
      • MWeather, on 01/26/2008, -0/+4The tag itself is compliant, changing rendering modes based on it is not. We have the doctype for that.
    • Edan25, on 01/25/2008, -1/+8It is an endless circle.
      A lot of people use IE > Web developers must support IE if they want a serious site > IE is supported > People still use IE.
      If people stopped using IE the web would be in another place.
      • HonoredMule, on 01/26/2008, -0/+3Well...that IS the reason why we're finally seeing improvement. Enough people are using Firefox/Opera/etc that REAL web standards are gaining traction and IE has to backtrack to the "embrace" stage of Microsoft's strategy.
    • EricAnderton, on 01/25/2008, -1/+14What MS has done here is allow for developers to "future proof" their webpages such that future releases of IE won't kill the work you've already done. This really is MS helping the community, for once.

      It makes sense since you're never going to get CSS implemented 100% correct on any browser. At some point during coding, you have to diverge from the standard in order to "make it work" with the browser(s) you have. That's not supporting MS, that's just being realistic: you wind up doing it for Opera/Safari/FF as well. So knowing that you don't have to redo everything, each time MS releases a new rendition is a step in the right direction.

      For that matter, I hope that the Firefox camp has something similar in mind. Imagine the chaos if they suddenly went with a different rendering engine or broke stuff by implementing CSS3.
      • Edan25, on 01/25/2008, -1/+3After all, Firefox and Safari render pages in a similar way. I don't know what about Opera and the rest, but I believe, for the record, that there isn't much different as from IE.
        It is true that you have to make it work, and that different browsers basically can't render the page exactly the same way, but IE is a different case.

        I'll take an extreme example to make my point - XMLHttpRequest.
        Why the hell do I have to write about 20 lines instead of one when I want to support IE ?
      • GMorgan, on 01/25/2008, -1/+1Far more complicated things than CSS have been implemented correctly in the past. What you are saying is either web browser developers are incompetent or they are intentionally doing it wrong because there is no reason why it shouldn't be correct.
    • FredFredrickson, on 01/25/2008, -0/+1They aren't helping MS with anything if they do that - they're just ensuring that people using older browsers don't see the page wrongly.
  • motang, on 01/25/2008, -10/+4Damn it they are at it again!
  • godzillaWax, on 01/25/2008, -18/+17What exactly is it that is "cutting both ways" about this? Microsoft is doing their best not to invalidate other people's work because of mistakes Microsoft made in the past. Honestly, arstechnica tries hard to be objective about MS, but most of the time just come off as bitter Apple fanboys.
    • fkr3, on 01/25/2008, -15/+4It's called a bandwagon, they're riding it more and more. Soon they'll complete their transition into a hybrid engadget / torrentfreak.
    • srg13, on 01/28/2008, -1/+3They should just make standards mode work as it should and be done with it. They shouldn't care about breaking sites - if somebody puts a doctype in a web page, but doesn't code to the standard, then it should be entirely their problem.

      Being so obsessive with backwards compatibility is one of the biggest reasons Windows is so bad as well.
      • my8bird, on 01/29/2008, -1/+1Being backwards compatible is the reason windows has market share and then gets sued for being a monopoly.
  • johnny222, on 01/25/2008, -10/+18I actually think this is a great idea. They could have thought of something much more difficult.
    • mossblaser, on 01/25/2008, -5/+13Maybe some sort of Genuine Browser Advantage?
  • nastri83, on 01/25/2008, -11/+3Yes.... let's make it a BIGGER browser!
  • jabberwolf, on 01/25/2008, -21/+10Standards set by who? And why can't MS have its own standards?
    Seriously do you guys even know what you're talking about? MS is just trying to be compatible with whatever everyone throws out there, even NON-STANDARD pages, yes that it allowed users to create and use. But how the hell is that a browser creator's problem - its the developer of the page !
    • technoredneck, on 01/25/2008, -1/+8No, Internet Explorer 6.0 shouldn't have stagnated for nearly seven years so web developers had to hack around it. And fixing standards compliance using a proprietary meta tag is not very, well, standards compliant.

      A tag that tells the browser to render the page like version X of browser Y is the most backwards thing I've ever seen. I think Microsoft is doing this so it can let IE 8 stagnate again like IE 6 did. When they release IE 9, they can be lazy and say, "If you would have used our proprietary tag, none of this backwards compatibility wouldn't have been an issue, even if you had to hack around our old and decrepit rendering engine, so we're just gonna give you a great big middle finger, suckers."
    • Edan25, on 01/25/2008, -1/+5http://www.w3.org/
      Microsoft chose to ignore those standards back then, and web developers suffer from it today.
      Microsoft can have it's own standards, but it's just not meant to work, they're not alone after all. Maybe they were back then.
    • vdog, on 01/25/2008, -0/+5Standards are set by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), and while MS can set it own, having both is just nightmare- imagine having to having to go from driving on the left side of the road to the right and vice versa as you drive from town to town.
      All you end up with is chaos, confusion, and broken machines surrounded by broken glass (usually because the web dev threw their PC through a window in frustration).
      One standard is all that is needed, and you don't want to go with MS's; unlike the W3C they are a FOR profit organisation. If their way becomes the only way, you can bet that they'll charge developers money for the rights to use it.
    • MWeather, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2" MS is just trying to be compatible with whatever everyone throws out there, even NON-STANDARD pages,"

      There are standards on how to handle stuff like that. The acid 2 test for example has invalid CSS. To pass it you must handle non-standard CSS correctly.
  • bcamp1973, on 01/25/2008, -11/+16pure freekin' stupidity! but that's what we've come to expect. as a web developer i can probably count the time of my life wasted on IE crap in man years, not man hours...
    • godzillaWax, on 01/25/2008, -15/+2Then you should probably head to ITT Tech or equivalent and learn how not to suck so hard at web development.
      • andycr512, on 01/25/2008, -0/+7It's his fault IE doesn't follow any obvious method of interpreting HTML, and certainly not the standards?
      • nickj6282, on 01/25/2008, -1/+5Holy *****! I laughed so hard at your "ITT Tech" comment I got coke (the drink) in my nose.

        ITT Tech is a joke. They do everything the "Microsoft Way" and no other. You should have seen the way that some instructors looked at me when I mentioned things like Linux and Firefox. You want to learn web design at ITT? They'll teach you to write pages for quirks mode in IE6 using ASP only. Their library and online learning database don't seem to know anything about Perl/PHP/Python/Ruby/etc.
    • estvir, on 01/25/2008, -2/+3Than you should be thanking them because because of this, all your old work won't suddenly stop working as Microsoft has put things in place to keep all those old and horribly coded sites going till they're overhauled.

      RTFA.
      • dotnetnoob, on 01/26/2008, -0/+0LOL. True da.

        All his time waste on IE crap will still work while he won't waste his time on the future web project because a simple switch.

        you know people are so blinded by their hate. they look retarded when they start talking ***** without thinking!
        • HonoredMule, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2My code won't stop working anyway. My systems are deployed in a bunch of call centers that happen to use Firefox, so I had the luxury of completely ignoring IE.

          But it's good to know that when IE 10 comes out, my standards-compliant code will STILL render in quirks mode...incorrectly.

          In the long term, coding for and using a real standards-compliant browser is still a safer, more future-proof option than using IE.
          • HonoredMule, on 01/27/2008, -0/+2erm...meant to say "render in 'quasi-standards' mode" not "quirks mode."
  • nullcodes, on 01/25/2008, -6/+34Microsoft is overly obsessed with backward compatibility. People should not have marked their pages as standards compliant if they weren't. Their pages would have appeared broken in other browsers. So they should fix their pages anyway. Non compliance in standards mode was a bug, and bugs need to be fixed. You don't let bugs become features.

    Microsoft needs to seriously re-evaluate their idea.
    • v413, on 01/25/2008, -12/+4You miss the global picture of what legacy means on the internet ... try and think some more
    • IphtashuFitz, on 01/25/2008, -1/+7Microsoft has always been overly obsessed with backward compatibility. I wrote some shareware back in the early 1990's on Windows 3.0 before Windows 95 ever came out. I can't compile the source code (written in Visual C++ 1.5) with any modern compilers since it uses a number of DLL hacks that only existed early on, but the program still runs fine on every version of Windows so far. I'd have to rewrite a large amount of the source from scratch if I wanted to build a more modernized version of it for NT, XP, Vista, etc.
      • nullcodes, on 01/25/2008, -5/+3How useful is that shareware program now? Aren't there by now newer alternatives that are better?

        Is backward compatibility worth having in an unreliable OS where people all over the internet complain that their system doesnt work responsively. And it's not a few noisy people complaining, because nobody counterpoints them. The obsession with backwards compatibility has come at a price. This is why people are switching to Macs, knowing that important software will get eventually get rewritten or recompiled for it anyway.

        Side note: If someone were to say that they had problems with Mac OS X .. people would immediately refute them and say that they havent had similar experience. With Vista, when people complain, nobody says "but I havent had any problems". This is because Vista has is causing problems for so many people. Some say Microsoft should have specified stricter systems requirements to prevent driver issues? I dont know. Either way it makes them look bad and Macs look a whole lot better.
        • daveisfera, on 01/25/2008, -1/+3Is having to re-buy/re-learning every program you use just for an OS upgrade any better?
          • nullcodes, on 01/25/2008, -0/+2If you REALLY need to, get an virtual machine software like VMWare and run the older OS within that. Newer virtual machine software like Parallels can run seamlessly in the background so you wont even know that you are running the program in a virutal machine that is running on top of the host OS. Actually I think microsoft is moving towards doing something like that which why they are working on their hypervisor.
  • plhearn, on 01/25/2008, -23/+2A vote for Huckabee is a vote for Jesus! Huckabee 2008!
    • afx1, on 01/25/2008, -0/+5your segue from web standards to Huckleberry was smooth as butter. barely even noticed it!
  • Loonacy, on 01/25/2008, -4/+8So what if you want a page that renders correctly in IE6, 7 and 8? It's enough of a pain NOW to get it working in both 6 and 7. I really don't see this IE8 meta tag taking off. Why write for IE8, 7, and 6 when you can write for only IE 7 and 6 instead and still have it work in 8?
    • prophetpimp, on 01/25/2008, -3/+7once 7 and 6 market share go below 50% you are gonna re-evaluate your thinking.
    • wrillo, on 01/25/2008, -1/+5the whole point of this is so that you won't have to rewrite anything for IE8! IE8 = IE7 unless you have the meta tag
      • Utopian, on 01/25/2008, -0/+3I think you missed his point. If a page works in IE6 and/or IE7 it will work in IE8 (if you make use of the doctype switch or omit the new tag). So where's the incentive to improve your website and make it more standards compliant?
        • honus, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1It's going to make re-designs easier. Eventually the whole web turns over, as old designs start to look antiquated. Now you don't have to hack and slash your new design as badly to get it to work in IE8. You just tack the new meta tag in and away you go.
          Of course, lots of time is going to need to elapse before IE8 penetration reaches the levels where legacy support won't be an issue.
    • Edan25, on 01/25/2008, -1/+1IE 8 is supposed to be in the 'normal' section now, hopefully painless, but you're still gonna have to write for IE 6-7.
      When the last two disappear, if ever, the world will be a better place. X:
    • riverrunner, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1Yes some guy at ars suggested we (web developers) all just ignore it and keep coding to standards with minor IE hacks since we have to test for IE7 anyway.
  • victorycig, on 01/25/2008, -6/+11I love ars. Their articles are almost always thoughtful and accurate. This is no exception.
  • Moskie, on 01/25/2008, -2/+17Why don't they just introduce this meta-tag, but have the browser go into the new standards-compliant mode by default if it isn't provided?

    That way, they might "break the web," but they still provide a simple solution to fix sites designed for previous version of IE (include a meta-tag).

    That seems like the best of both worlds to me, and an obvious solution.
    • Trevahaha, on 01/25/2008, -4/+1Many site rendering frameworks/intranets/etc. are closed source and are designed for a specific browser version. Going in there and "adding a tag" might not be feasible.
  • nullcodes, on 01/25/2008, -0/+8Also, if they do this philosophy of letting bugs become features .. they soon have many many modes of IE to deal with in a few version revisions (as new MS or other standards come out, each time the first implementation will be flawed .. and therefore the next version will have to have backward compatibility with that).
    • voetsjoeba, on 01/25/2008, -1/+4At some point you just have to cut backwards compatibility. In future versions of IE this meta tag will probably be ignored and the pages always rendered in super-standards mode.
  • withears, on 01/25/2008, -4/+2So IE8 has to be "fixed" so it can render pages that were hacked to display in IE6? Perhaps there IS justice in the World!
    • godzillaWax, on 01/25/2008, -1/+2No. A new tag is added if a developer wants his page to be standards compliant now. Old pages still render as they always did without IE8 bending over backwards.
  • lrdntwnd, on 01/25/2008, -5/+22I think that Microsoft would be much better off packaging Firefox with Windows and letting go of IE. It does very little to help their business and it just perpetuates the brokenness and lack of standards on the Internet. They could build-in Windows Live features for Firefox and even build a custom skin for it. It would save them an immense amount of time and development and allow their coders to work on something much more important like fixing Windows itself.
    • godzillaWax, on 01/25/2008, -5/+6By saying "fixing Windows itself" it's pretty clear where your allegiances lie. But to address the more rational parts of your comment: the last thing the world needs is to have 1 dominant browser again. The existence of Firefox prompted IE7. The advances in IE7 then prompted more innovation in Firefox. Meanwhile Opera is off on the sidelines playing with itself.
      • solistus, on 01/26/2008, -0/+4By acting like Windows doesn't need to be fixed, it's pretty clear you know little about technology. Vista still prioritises its silly built-in media DRM over network activity on a stack level, so it still gets atrocious network performance when a media file is played. This is one of countless bugs that has everyone who knows what the hell they're talking about to demand Vista SP1 as soon as possible. MS has agreed and is releasing it relatively soon.

        Nothing IE has ever done has prompted innovation in Firefox. Name one feature IE implemented first that turned out to be a good idea. The only time other browsers copy IE behaviours is for compatibility purposes. IE is a piece of ***** that is used for web designers solely to test compatibility with IE, and the web community would be elated to see it killed off.
    • EricAnderton, on 01/25/2008, -2/+6You're right, but hell would freeze over before that happens.

      The problem is that MS relies on technological dominance as part of it's PR campaign. If they so much as give a wink to the competition, then they loose face and possibly buisness. As Firefox/Mozilla is squarely in the opposing camp (FOSS), it would be like MS saying that "FOSS is good for *us* too."

      Re-branded or not, you'd better believe that the Mozilla, Gecko and Firefox folks will tout that MS is using their code for ever more after that. And *that* would be like saying "even the biggest for-profit software company in the world uses our product - and you pay the same they do: nothing."
    • Edan25, on 01/25/2008, -1/+3On the fly, they could let Windows go too (dreams, dreams...)
      No, seriously, letting IE go would've been the best solution. Too bad it is never gonna happen.
    • my8bird, on 01/29/2008, -0/+1Are you stupid? IE is tied to the OS, the file expolorer is the same engine. Think or at least learn something before you speak.
  • chris9902, on 01/25/2008, -6/+8"Shouldn't there be one standards mode by default?"

    well yes but we can't go back 10 years and get 90% of the web redesigned. Microsoft more than anyone HAS to support backwards compatibility.
    • nailer, on 01/27/2008, -1/+2A better idea: simply make IE use the ActiveX control for Gecko (or create a WebKit one).

      Problem solved. IE 8 still works with most sites as they are now, with very little downside (Microsoft doesn't make any revenue from IE).
    • srg13, on 01/28/2008, -0/+1No they don't - only sites that say they are standards compliant, but are actually not would have to be re-designed. Pages like this would probably not work in any browser apart from IE already - so what's the problem about breaking them in IE too?
  • Corrosionx, on 01/25/2008, -1/+10Damn why would they even continue investing in their rendering engines when Gecko is pratically perfect and it would cost them a lot less to implement?

    Screw those idiots who designed in Frontpage Express in 1999.
    • Loonacy, on 01/25/2008, -1/+4Because then they would have to admit that Open Source works, and it would cut back on their OS tie-ins.
      • ElbertF, on 01/25/2008, -2/+4MS has a few open source projects of their own, believe it or not.
  • ewarner, on 01/25/2008, -0/+8If we continue to cater to people who refuse to update old technology, we're going to slow our advancement to a crawl. No, we can't change standards overnight, but there needs to be a permanent phasing out of all older IE browsers. How many Mac users still use Safari 1.0 (if their system allows an upgrade?). As a web developer, I have been tempted to not even bother proofing sites in IE 5.5. I still do it just because it's close enough to 6.0's behavior that it's not much extra time. The day IE 6's usage drops below 10%, I will rejoice. I think we should do more to encourage it, though, rather than just waiting for it to happen. The current (and past) rough browser distribution is here, if you were wondering: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a ...
    • vdog, on 01/25/2008, -1/+2That's scary that IE6 still has a third of the market share on a site that teaches people about web standards (the more tech orientated sites tend to skew towards Firefox, as tech savvy users prefer it).
  • EricAnderton, on 01/25/2008, -2/+11Anyone taking this topic seriously should check out the ALA link. Here's a taste:

    meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8"
    meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8;FF=3;OtherUA=4"
    meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge"

    (I blame the comment system - those are supposed to be HTML tags. Sorry)

    Not only are these valid HTML, but as http-equiv meta tags go they can also be sent as _headers by the server itself_. That makes retrofitting your existing code a little easier, YMMV of course.
    • MrPhelps, on 01/25/2008, -0/+3The whole thing has been designed precisely so that no "retrofitting" will be necessary. Besides, I don't see how adding this kind of junk to what used to be a user agent-independent standard could seem like a good idea to anyone.
  • SQLserver, on 01/25/2008, -2/+5Sorry, but IE sucks.
    It would take a LOT to get it out of the hole M$ has dugg.

    >>First, it will have to ACTUALLY reach this point. Knowing M$, it will either be late, or half-baked.
    >>Then, it will have to get a better interface then IE7. Maybe some like the Vista look, but really, the stop/refresh button shouldn't be shoved down to microscopic levels. You hit the stop button when you are thinking "NO NO NO wait..........!!!!" and it shouldn't take an hour to reach it before it is too late.
    >>Then, it will have to get a nice plugin system, and theming system, as good as Firefox's. Probably, this should mean open sourcing at least some of the browser.
    >>Nice features, like Firefox's Built in spell check, and no more stupid pop-up find box. Firefox's is much more elegant.

    Oh yeah. Did I mention speed and less bulk?
    What about its security?

    Right now, I seriously doubt IE will be even as good as Firefox 2 by IE 9.
    • Edan25, on 01/25/2008, -1/+2IE is a lost cause.
      They'll never be able to get out of their own hole.
  • D4rklight, on 01/25/2008, -0/+4http://media.arstechnica.com/staff.media/320/acidt ...
    lol
  • D4rklight, on 01/25/2008, -3/+3http://media.arstechnica.com/staff.media/320/acidt ...
    lol
  • kd1s, on 01/25/2008, -4/+5I told Windows Update to NOT install IE7. And I always look at the updates being shoved at me and deselect IE7 because quite frankly, I don't use it. Oh I use Firefox and Vonage has pissed me off because now you can only view call history in IE, got around that by using IETab but still, I had to take that step. They're unwilling to address the problem either.
    MS has lost the browser war once again. And I don't think IE8 will bring it back to them.
    • LightSpeed4, on 01/26/2008, -2/+3how do you lose a war where u have over 84% of the marketshare? you delusional firefox fanboy
    • FKnight, on 01/26/2008, -1/+1"Oh I use Firefox and Vonage has pissed me off because now you can only view call history in IE, got around that by using IETab but still, I had to take that step."

      You better let my copy of Netscape Navigator on my Mac know that Vonage only lets you view call history in IE. It apparently has not been informed of this fact and is still displaying my call log just fine.
  • Reviewman, on 01/25/2008, -8/+3I don't know why everyone complains about IE, I found FireFox to be much more a pain to work with when it comes to standards. I do all my hardcore design/coding with a text editor and can only guess that the people who complain the most about IE standards are using Dreamweaver or some other GUI garbage. I hate to use the old "learn to code" line, but maybe the complainers should and stop using the ole "IE suxs" excuse for their lack of knowledge. There's hundreds of different ways to get a browser to display something, go learn a few of them. Get rid of the GUI, it'll make you stupid. Writing code for today's browsers is a cakewalk compared to what it was a couple years ago. As for "MS has lost the browser war" - you really need to go look at the numbers.
    • TheHim, on 01/26/2008, -2/+1That's nonsense and you know it. IE7 is decent though, compared to 6.
    • Vagari, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2Actually I write all my code raw, always have. And I use Dreamweaver at work because that's what is provided. I have literally never used the WYSIWYG editor. All text for me.

      And yet I enjoy writing code that works in Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc, etc, etc. And then I have to go back and fix it for IE. I have no idea how the hell you magically can make things that work in IE and yet some how the other browsers ("Firefox") have issues with the standards. Oh right, you're probably one of the guys IE is catering to. When you are coding with actual web standards and not what IE dictates as standards get back to us. ;-)
    • ewarner, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1Since the day I started, I've been a handcoder. I used Dreamweaver once to see how it worked, and never touched it again after looking at the generated code. So I agree with you on the point that WYSIWYG development tools are a setback to coding a standards-compliant webpage. But you can't honestly believe that IE has been beneficial to the progression of web standards. Yes, all the other browsers have their own bugs, shortcomings, and quirks, but Microsoft has sat in their own little world making up their own rules as to how the internet should work. IE6 and earlier commonly interpreted CSS in counterintuitive ways, or just flat out ignored the W3C specification. IE7 is MUCH better, and much more in step with the other browsers, which is evidence that IE was the problem child and Microsoft knew it. And I am perfectly content developing for IE7 alongside Firefox and Safari.

      Take a look at this page and try not to laugh: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms537512. ...
      Especially at this part: "Conditional comments make it easy for developers to take advantage of the enhanced features offered by Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 and later versions, while writing pages that downgrade gracefully in less-capable browsers or display correctly in browsers other than Internet Explorer."

      The only time I have used conditional comments or seen them used used is to "hack" a webpage and make it work the same in IE as it does in other browsers. Denying that IE is a grievance to web development just makes you look fanboyish.
    • srg13, on 01/28/2008, -0/+1I have always hand coded, and all my valid code works on all browsers that I test on... Except for Internet Explorer. I then have to go and make a new stylesheet (linked in a conditional statement) that hacks around all the things that IE does wrongly.
  • invasi0n, on 01/25/2008, -2/+2I don't understand why people are talking about a product that probably will come out in the next... few years... Knowing how fast Microsoft is, I'm ready to make a bet that IE8 Beta will be available sometime in 2011 and the final version might be downloaded in late 2012. So there's no reason to start moaning in 2008 about something that nobody ever seen on this planet.
    • trying2hide, on 01/29/2008, -0/+1... did you read the part about the "patch" for 7? So you might download your security updates and suddenly! websites stop working.
  • Lehawk, on 01/25/2008, -0/+2I think many don't understand that, while this makes IE8 look better on the surface, this will ultimately delay website's implementation of the standard due to fact that nothing will force users of IE7 to upgrade to IE8 nor force websites to become standard compliant. Since the large majority of web users will use IE7 or IE8, websites that work with IE7 won't have to improve their browser _even_ if IE8 has an 100% adoption rate. Why would they spend the money the upgrade to the standard with little gains from other web browser users? New sites will, however, be able to go straight to the standard as long as they _remember_ to add Microsoft's meta tag early on in development!
  • falafelkiosken, on 01/25/2008, -0/+2the boy who cried wolf
  • MrPhelps, on 01/25/2008, -2/+3I've been using Firefox for years, and I've only very rarely come across pages that would look really broken when rendered in compliance with standards. Breaking all of the future web pages so that a few boring web pages from 1992 will continue to look "right" just doesn't make sense.
  • nirvaorg, on 01/25/2008, -4/+1damn microsoft.
    just burry this f*ing browser and there would be no wars and no global warming
  • ajrabe, on 01/25/2008, -4/+1I actually thing this is FINALLY a step in the right direction for Micro$oft... They're doing to the right thing by making things standards compliant, while still not breaking a LOT of old (not even that old...) pages out there. Supposedly, IE8 is going to correctly render the Acid2 test (http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/). Now I'm a big fan and advocate of using Firefox, but Firefox doesn't even correctly render Acid2. Micro$oft still sucks tho
    • afx1, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2Firefox 3.0 does...
    • srg13, on 01/28/2008, -0/+1The only pages that they are breaking would already be broken on every other browser available. Putting a doctype on your page, but then not coding to that standard is very bad practice, and anyone doing it should expect it not to work.
  • morphie, on 01/25/2008, -7/+2What's wrong with Quircks mode? Firefox does it. Safari does it.. Stop wining. It's the reality we live in.
    • srg13, on 01/28/2008, -0/+1Did you read the article? They have quirks mode, then a mode that renders standard pages wrongly, and then a mode that renders standard pages correctly, but forces developers adding non-standard meta tags into their code...

      They can keep quirks mode - no one's debating that. But if a page says it's standards compliant, then it should be rendered how every other browser on the market does it, not how IE7 did...
  • Planets, on 01/26/2008, -1/+8"One of the nastier things about being a web developer, I'm told, is the existence of Internet Explorer."
  • maboroshi, on 01/26/2008, -3/+1If Microsoft made cars like they make browsers, all gas-station attendants would be required to have degrees in chemistry so they could "hack" the standard fuel on the spot so it wouldn't make that version of the car explode.
  • pumacub, on 01/26/2008, -6/+2There are so many people on here bashing IE and Microsoft who have absolutely no clue what they're talking about. I'm not defending IE, I think previous efforts have been poorly implemented, and the browser was pretty much abandoned for quite some time. However, Microsoft has finally put itself on the right track in regards to standards compliance and yet people are so blinded by hate that they can't even pull their head out of their ass long enough to have an intelligent discussion on the issue of how to deal with legacy implementations. It’s like one big uneducated circle-jerk under the banner of open source support.

    It’s really getting to the point where Microsoft bashers sound like a bunch of stoned hippies from the 70’s rambling on about "The Man"…
    • ewarner, on 01/26/2008, -0/+4Except in this case the hippies want to FOLLOW the rules that "the man" is breaking.
    • stix213, on 01/29/2008, -1/+0Well, I am sorry but I can't congratulate Microsoft for finally deciding to conform to standards after all this time. IE 1.0 was first released in 1995, so for the last 13 years MS has just been jerking all the web developers around..... And now I'm supposed to have tears of joy because MS is going to conform to standards now?
      And one more thing, MS said they were conforming to standards when they were getting ready to release IE7..... That wasn't true, and I really doubt it will be true for IE8. Just another "quirks" mode to add to the list to support.....
  • donkeySays, on 01/26/2008, -0/+4***** IE!
  • jordanleegauci, on 01/26/2008, -2/+1They can try to make IE standard and compliant but Firefox will always be better.
  • stockjones, on 01/26/2008, -0/+1Although I hate this like everyone else, the reality is that many businesses are using web apps from various companies that are built on older quirks mode stuff (catered to IE5, IE6). When our company rebuilt our website we made it as standard complaint as possible XHTML 1.0 Transitional. When we launched the site we had many issues with IE6 users which was a pain and many of them would refuse to update to IE7 or FF. Also we had a vendor on some SAP web app and standards mode like this "broke their web app". it would only work right under IE6. The reality is that a lot of companies (and SAP is no slouch) have built web applications that were oriented around IE6 compatibility. I know for the blog people and upscale web types in Seattle and San Fransisco this just seems crazy, but in the real business world this is a reality.
    • srg13, on 01/28/2008, -0/+2Please read the article - quirks mode is still there, it still works the way it did in IE6, and that's not changing.

      What would be broken if MS did the right thing is sites with doctype declarations that don't actually conform to standards. These pages won't render correctly on any other browser, and they shouldn't in IE either.
  • PostalBean, on 01/26/2008, -2/+1Hehe, cuts both ways. Like a bisexual.
  • motters, on 01/26/2008, -0/+2Internet Explorer is without doubt the worst browser currently available. I wouldn't recommend anyone to use it. It sounds as if with IE8 MS is just piling more woes onto an already large heap. What it needs to do is get with the program and properly support W3C standards.
    • stix213, on 01/29/2008, -0/+0Yep! I think IE4 was the only browser from MS that I actually have never hated. It's been just downhill from there.
  • Corrosionx, on 01/27/2008, -0/+2Can someone write a virus that forces all infected IE's to use the Gecko engine? That would solve most of the problem...
  • trying2hide, on 01/29/2008, -0/+1But NO! we won't make it backwards compatible. No, we will just "break the web" Yep. Way to go MS... push more folks to Mozilla and Opera.
  • stix213, on 01/29/2008, -1/+0This is yet another reason to stop using that buggy IE
  • reemixx, on 01/31/2008, -1/+0I think Microsoft is so scared of 'breaking the web' and having people stop using IE because of it, that they fail to realise that by making IE completely standards compliant, more people will be using it in the future because it will actually WORK properly. Besides, even if it did 'break the web' I don't think it'd even put a dent in the numbers using IE at the moment - many people still use it because they think it's all that's available.
  • ferris4, on 05/24/2008, -0/+0http://www.genericsmed.com
    http://www.generics.ws
  •  

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