Compatibility and IE8

Article
01/22/2008

In Dean’s recent Internet Explorer 8 and Acid2: A Milestone post, he highlighted our responsibility to deliver both interoperability (web pages working well across different browsers) and backwards compatibility (web pages working well across different versions of IE). We need to do both, so that IE8 continues to work with the billions of pages on the web today that already work in IE6 and IE7 but also makes the development of the next billion pages (in an interoperable way) much easier. Continuing Dean’s theme, I’d like to talk about some steps we are taking in IE8 to achieve these goals.

I’ve been on the IE team for over a decade, and I’ve seen us apply the “Don’t Break the Web” rule in six different major versions of IE in different ways. In IE 6, we used the DOCTYPE switch to enable different “modes” of behavior to protect compatibility. When we released IE 6 in 2001, very few pages on the web were in “standards mode” (my team ran a report on the top 200 web sites at the time that reported less than 1%) – few people knew what a DOCTYPE was, and few tools generated them. We used the DOCTYPE switch in IE6 to change the box model to comply with the standards and enable developers to opt-in to the new behavior. We’d already seen so much content written to IE5.x’s non-standard interpretation of the CSS2 spec that we couldn’t change it without causing a slew of problems.

In IE7 we made a lot more changes to improve IE’s standards compliance, particularly with CSS. We limited these behavior changes to IE’s “standards mode” only, and we expected that this would help limit compatibility problems as it had in the past. Unfortunately, and somewhat surprisingly to us, this wasn’t true; many of those changes made IE incompatible with content that was already part of the web. It turned out by the time IE7 shipped in late 2006, roughly half of the top 200 US web sites were in “standards mode”. Many of those sites had been “opted in” to standards mode by a tool that generated their content; many of them had probably been hand-coded by someone who was trying to do the right thing, and make their HTML code valid according to the W3C. Regardless, users of those sites expected them to keep working the same, even when they downloaded a new version of IE. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

But wait, a lot of people say at this point, why isn’t this a problem for Firefox, or Safari, or any other browser? The answer is that developers of many sites had worked around many of the shortcomings or outright errors in IE6, and now expected IE7 to work just like IE6. Web developers expected us, for example, to maintain our model for how content overflows its box, even in “standards mode,” even though it didn’t follow the specification – because they’d already made their content work with our model. In many cases, these sites would have worked better if they had served IE7 the same content and stylesheets they were serving when visited with a non-IE browser, but they had “fixed their content” for IE. Sites didn’t work, and users experienced problems.

In short, there was an expectation that even under standards mode, IE would keep working the same way. Because sites expected IE6 behavior, the DOCTYPE switch failed to protect compatibility in the real world when we changed behavior under standards mode to become more compliant. We realized that “Don’t Break the Web” should really be translated to “Don’t change what developers expect IE to do for current pages that are already deployed.” (Of course, for content that is developed to a later standard that isn’t deployed yet, you can expect different things.)

With this painful and unexpected lesson under our belt, we worked together with The Web Standards Project (in the WaSP-Microsoft Task Force) on this problem. I can’t give them enough credit for this work; it’s tough to step into the shoes of a browser vendor that ships to half a billion users to figure out what the best thing to do is, when you really just want to sit down and write code to the standards. We started from a simple statement of “enable (and encourage) interoperable web development, but don’t force IE to break pages that work properly in IE today.” I think we all want to converge to a world where a web developer doesn’t have to spend much time at all testing and recoding their site for different browsers. At the same time, we can’t break the web experience on current sites for users like my mom, even for as good a reason as improving standards compliance. With all the great styling and layout changes we’re working on in our new engine for IE8 to be much more standards compliant, that’s a lot of potential breakage. (More details in the near future, but the Acid2 announcement gives you some idea.)

We realized that the model for web development was really “write to the standard, then test against and fix problems in the most popular browsers.” This meant that the web developer had one crucial piece of information we could make use of – what version of IE they had tested against, and after much discussion in the WaSP-MS task force, we ended up with a <meta>-based “opt-in to the browser version I tested with” strategy.

Aaron Gustafson, one of the members of the WaSP-MicrosoftTask Force wrote an article detailing where we ended up that was posted on A List Apart today; I highly recommend reading it for a different perspective. I’ll summarize, though, that:

“Quirks mode” remains the same, and compatible with current content.
“Standards mode” remains the same as IE7, and compatible with current content.
If you (the page developer) really want the best standards support IE8 can give, you can get it by inserting a simple <meta> element. Aaron gives more details on this in his article.

We believe this approach has the best blend of allowing web developers to easily write code to interoperable web standards while not causing compatibility problems with current content. We also think this approach allows developers to opt in to standards behavior on their own schedule and as it makes sense to them, instead of forcing developers into a responsive mode when a new version of IE has different behavior on their current pages. I’m excited by all the standards work we’re doing in IE8; I’m even more excited that we won’t cause a lot of compatibility problems for our users and web developers.

Chris Wilson
IE Platform Architect

Comments

Anonymous
January 21, 2008
Thanks for posting this, let's spread the news around. Digg This: http://digg.com/tech_news/IE8_Super_Standards_Mode
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
I wish this wasn't needed, but backward compatibility is important and it does seem like the best solution with that in mind. I'm curious why a whole working group was needed to come up with such an obvious solution though!
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
It's really no fun to switch the <meta> tag in the source code for the purpose of testing. At least, it could be a switch in IE configuration or IE Developer Toolbar to turn the IE8 standard mode on/off.
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
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Anonymous
January 21, 2008
@Xepol: if they break the compatiblity with older sites they will lost market share instantly. wow... quirks mode, standards mode, super standards mode... :D In IE9 we will see the super duper standards mode... this will be the ABBA release... hehe
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
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Anonymous
January 21, 2008
@tShao-- Good feedback, thanks. @Xepol-- If only it were that easy... Pointing fingers does nothing to help the end user, who just wants the yesterday's content to keep working. Even assuming that all sites on the Internet have active development teams (a large and incorrect assumption), what is to be done about all of the content which is no longer editable for myriad other reasons (e.g. burned on CD/DVD/etc being the most obvious)?
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
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Anonymous
January 21, 2008
Peter Michaux beat me to it! If this problem only affects Internet Explorer due to the fact that sites check for the agent string or whatever, then just radically change the agent string!
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
As some people suggested, I hope you'll make it so the meta tag won't be needed in some cases. Like if the doctype is for an HTML5 document, or if the page is served as application/xml. That wouldn't break the web at all, and would spare us the extra tag in the future.
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
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Anonymous
January 21, 2008
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Anonymous
January 21, 2008
For me personally the best thing would to drop the backwards compatibility and let all the webdevelopers and companies who didn't care about standards pay the price. However, the META-solution seems like a reasonable compromise although by v9 it must time for quirks-mode to die. By that time it will have been at least 8 years since IE6 was launched, and 8 years must be long enough for people to learn about doctypes.
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
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Anonymous
January 21, 2008
IE 5 -> IE 6: Quirksmode -> Standardsmode per DOCTYPE IE 6 -> IE 7: Es wurden eher nur offensichtliche Bugs in der bisherigen CSS-Implementierung gefixt. IE 7 -> IE 8: Standardsmode -> Best Standardmode per <meta>-Tag http://blogs
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
You've been kicked (a good thing) - Trackback from DotNetKicks.com
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
I completely agree with Sami - SuperStandards should be ON by default. If IE7/quirks mode is needed, the meta tag should be used. And backport this meta tag to IE7 and IE6. This would make a lot more sense.
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
Will it be possible to target IE6 with this new meta tag as well? For instance, using IE8, could we use content="IE=6" to see how the page would look in IE6? I won't complain if it's not implemented, because IE6 should be forgotten anyway.
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
Standard should be on by default, or just call your browser 'IE 7 extended'. You're not going to break anything, all the web works fine on Safari, Firefox, Opera & Co. What's actually breaking the web are deprecated browsers like yours :)
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
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Anonymous
January 21, 2008
Why not just enable side-by-side install for IE8 and IE7-? Also, allow users for easy switch between rendering engines of these browsers. IE8's unique agent string - great idea. Also:

say NO to full system integration - shell becoming unresponsive due to browser problems is simply unacceptable. This is twenty first century and application should be able to break down without affecting the rest of its environment.
say YES to multiple sandboxes - one instance of the browser should not affect other instances.
say YES to user sandbox finally - it's a calamity that web applications require higher priviledges under IE than Mozilla. Sigh. Regards, Ruemere

Anonymous
January 21, 2008
I'd prefer having the superstandards mode on by default. Let the user switch to quirks mode, if the page is not displayed.
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
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Anonymous
January 21, 2008
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Anonymous
January 21, 2008
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Anonymous
January 21, 2008
I understand the above, but don't remember huge problems in upgrading the sites we work on for IE7. We had a mix of standards and non-standards websites, and most were upgraded for IE7 easily. (Most didn't need to) Will this meta tag affect the conditional comments?
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
"we can’t break the web experience on current sites for users like my mom, even for as good a reason as improving standards compliance." Yes you can, you don't want to, that's something completely different. Btw, why are you still working on this POS rendering engine, there are lots of other free options available that work a LOT better than IE ever will. Just drop Trident and replace it with WebKit or Gecko. You guys are reinventing the wheel, again. Probably just a bad case of not-invented-here syndrome.
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/01/21/compatibility-and-ie8.aspx http://www.alistapart.com/articles
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
So you won't be passing Acid2 then? Shame.
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
In IE8 why don't you just shift the current modes? So Quirks mode renders pages as if it were IE7, and Standards mode renders pages as if it were IE8? By the time IE8 comes out there shouldn't be a reason for people coding to IE6 standards...
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
In IE8 why don't you just shift the current modes? So Quirks mode renders pages as if it were IE7, and Standards mode renders pages as if it were IE8? By the time IE8 comes out there shouldn't be a reason for people coding for IE6 quirks...
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
I agree, super-standard mode should be the default mode. That way, any new website won't need much of a cross-browser testing. Detect if website was built with conditional comments for IE6 or IE7 or with classic hakcs, then render the old content with the old engine. Older sites should work, newer built websites should be standard compliant. Gradually, old sites will be replaced. You can't come after so many years of ignoring us and say, you know, we're getting there but probably IE9 will do it.
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
I really understand the need of having a choice when it comes to a web-browser. But why has the rendering engine have to be the main concern? Why have several different foundation engines striving to reach exactly the same result? Why not make the rendering engine a plugin, develop the engine as open-source but let the rest of the browser closed-source. Each browser will have its own proprietary interface, unique set of features, but at least the rendering engine will be essentially the same. There will still be competition among the browsers.
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
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Anonymous
January 21, 2008
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Anonymous
January 21, 2008
@loggin: Indeed. You know, I have a good business plan: complain to a big software company that their browser is not compatible, then wait for them to offer multiple VirtualPC images for this problem and even an idea to fix it! Then when they're done, let's then whine that it's not the right idea at all and spam Operafox like we usually do! That'll give the IE team a clear road ahead. One thing's for sure, consistency is not one of the oft-requested standards. If MS rejects this I'm betting good money on a dozen "I could read this Archive.org'd page in IE7 and now I can't!" posts. That said, I'd much prefer the frame-security attribute last mentioned on the IEBlog be a meta-tag too. Maybe 'name="X-Frame-Security" content="frameid1=restricted,frameid2=normal,framename3=blah"'. That would mean no waiting for HTML5 to add a standard security attribute. Not that anyone here is waiting for HTML5 to spam Operafox.
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
This is a very very bad idea. Just make this "Super standards mode" the default in standards mode, and leave quirks mode alone (if it shouldn't just be removed). If people want their sites to work in a modern browser they should just follow the standards. The idea about letting the user (not the web developer) switch to an older rendering engine sounds good. For once just break that backwards compatability!
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
No surprises here, Microsoft continues to impede and undermine web standards. Hey IE team, this is 2008, not 2001. Stop living in the past, no one wants to code stupid workarounds for IE6 and if websites still uses IE6 code it probably isn't up to date with the current content. Then again this is a waste of time, even microsoft.com is rendered in quirks mode on all other browsers, way to go there when it comes to standards compliance. http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/997/msvj5.png
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
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Anonymous
January 21, 2008
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Anonymous
January 21, 2008
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Anonymous
January 21, 2008
This also means that the Acid2 test in it's true form WON'T render correctly.
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
What a load of horse dung. No modern browsers require a special tag to function correctly. Firefox has managed to wrangle a good 30-40% of your market share without having to worry about breaking sites. All you need is a decent rendering system, but you don't have it - period.
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
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Anonymous
January 21, 2008
http://alistapart.com/articles/beyonddoctype "the IE team began work on a completely new rendering engine for IE8—one that followed the CSS 2.1 spec as closely as possible" Ah, so Trident is dead at last - hurray! What's the new engine called, out of interest?
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
After having read the article at ALA, I'm seriously worried. I hope (and believe) the other browser makers aren't stupid enough to tag along (haha!) with this idea of locking a web page to a certain rendering engine. It's an awful idea.
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
I'm not too sure about this approach. It is going down the route of user agent specific code at a time when we are getting very close to being able to code using standards based code alone. Coding sites properly is the responsibility of the developer. Developers are not just coding for IE on Windows, but many other browsers and platforms. To date IE has been the worst browser in the market, even though it has the largest market share. I'm enthused by what I'm hear coming out of the IE8 camp, but surely you want to encourage convergence rather than divergence? The standards are written and accepted by the community and almost all browser manufacturers. Why introduce new criteria outside of these? Sticking to standards will also allow IE to put the responsibility back on developers to use an accepted and standard way of creating websites.
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
@Xepol - I think @Nemeseri answered you pretty well. We shouldn't just "break" developers (sites), because the ones who immediate suffer are our users. @jm - I'm not focused on encouraging developers to go back and change all existing content - or at least not to the point of forcing them to have to do it between now and when we ship IE8. @Peter Michaux, @Brandon Bloom - if we identify as something other than IE, we shut ourselves out to a whole DIFFERENT set of sites. The problem is that sites are, in fact, tested against specific browsers and versions; this changes to a model that reflects that. @Stifu - I said that: "(Of course, for content that is developed to a later standard that isn’t deployed yet, you can expect different things.)" @sami, @kimblin, @ruemere, @Webdesign, et al - any method that requires end users to switch between modes to get the page to "work right" is broken. Most users don't know about quirks mode, and don't (and shouldn't) need to care. @Little Dave - we actually proposed a conditional-comments-like syntax for CSS a couple of years ago to the CSS WG, and were roundly denied by most of the other members of the group. I still think it would be a good idea, personally. @M T - that would only make more sense if we wanted to put the burden on users. @Rowan - no. IE7 compatibility for quirks and "standards" mode is the minimum bar. @Takazudo - what makes you think I don't understand how we got here? I do; that doesn't change my answer for the least damaging way out. @Paul: >By the time IE8 comes out there shouldn't be a reason for people coding to IE6 standards... Actually, they still will be; and they'll still be coding for IE7 too. Oh, and most importantly, there's tons of content that's already developed that will still be there. @Thomas Tallyce - it's called Trident. Trident is more than just the layout and rendering engine bit - it's the parser, core storage, object model, etc.
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
I think it would be the best (as mentioned before) to leave the quirks mode alone, since these are the 'old sites'. However the developers who did the effort to make IE7 work in normal mode are (probably) also the ones who want to make their site work with IE8. The same goed more or less for the users. Users with IE7 probably also update to IE8. The ones with IE6 or lower can use quirks mode..
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
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Anonymous
January 21, 2008
cwilso: thanks for having taken the time to answer, despite all the negativity. ;)
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
MS, please reconsider your position ! We want a standard IE8 ! Let's have the IE8 Standards mode on by default. Having IE7 standards mode on by default so as not to break older uncompliant sites is nonsense. If IE7 broke so many sites when it came out they are either still broken with that engine or have been fixed, most of the time by using conditional comments. What's the point of coming up with standards solutions to call in IE specific CSS if there useless in IE8 ? Please don't do it !  <style type="text/css" title="Default" media="screen, projection"> /* <![CDATA[ / @import "styles.css"; / ]]> */ </style>
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
George Ornbo: "I'm not too sure about this approach. It is going down the route of user agent specific code at a time when we are getting very close to being able to code using standards based code alone." I completely agree. We're so close now, and they decide to go and destroy it all? Thomas Tallyce: "I really hope that other browser vendors do not implement that and that the IE team think very seriously again about the consequences of implementing this. Compatibility is important but we have to accept that some breakage CAN occur as the web is a constantly evolving medium, and that people have to accept that." You nailed it there.
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
@cwilso It's all good, but what you are going to do with future versions of IE? One more "extra mode" in IE 9, then again a new rendering mode in IE 10, and so on? Can you answer the question?
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
@cwilco: Basically, you're rewarding those web developers who've done it wrong and don't care about standards; validating them in their pigheaded ways by smothering any chance of a single standards-based internet. The internet as it exists right now is still in its infant-years; and you're weighing it down with a soon-to-be infinite amount of baggage to carry around for the rest of its days. Worst. Decision. Ever. (Also, I have to say that the badly named web standards project has made itself quite impossible by supporting and advocating this farce. I hope its members realize that...)
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
Congratulations, it's definitely the best solution for the time being. But what makes me afraid is the fact that you don't see it as a temporary solution for IE8, but even want other browser vendors to adopt it. Which would mean you're breaking the web, but in another way. Please let this be a solution only for IE8. As soon as 90% of all pages on the web are standards compliant, release IE9, which will only have one rendering engine: the most standards compliant one.
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
@bart I don't think it's fair to call non-standardista developers pigheaded - one of the real benefits of the web is the low barrier to entry. The fact that we do have standards means that those more advanced developers can leverage these to take advantage of them. But if we all had to write everything to 100% perfect code from the standard, the web wouldn't be nearly as big as it is now because no-one would be able to start so easily. (I agree with your other points though.)
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
What a shame, MS! Just implement a full support of web standards and no web develoeper has to take care about the compatibility after you send out updates from your browser. Wake up!
Anonymous
January 21, 2008
Chris, thanks for listening. As I said on ALA, I'd prefer it if it went according to the whole DOCTYPE thing, but I understand why you've felt the need to go down this route. And since you've come up with something that can be implemented within standards, using a meta tag - like I requested on your blog - that won't break anything else, I'm content with that. It really does feel like MS have listened, here. Maybe it's not the answer that would have been ideal (for standards advocates) but it's a compromise we (for the most part) can live with; and that you can live with. So big thanks to yourselves and to WaSP for this.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Man, there are some insane posters in these comments. IE (like other browsers) are client / server systems where HTTP/HTML is the client/server protocol. If servers support a specific version of that protocol then you need to support that version by default and opt-in to new behavior - just like any client/server system. I would have thought this was obvious. End users don't really care about web standards. Nor should they. Web Standards are there to make the server programmers' lives easier when dealing with more than one client. Most of comments sound like they are written by programmers with no real awareness of production systems. Standards support is a medium/long term cost saver for businesses. Changing the default behavior in a browser is a short term expense - it will require development effort to fix immediately. This is therefore the right choice - you still get the best of both worlds.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Sorry, while I understand your reasoning I think the result of that thought process is astonishingly bad.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I commend Microsoft for such a move. For those that wonder what sort of rendering techniques Microsoft will use in future browsers, the answer is quite simple: it will use the same Meta tag. If the site renders fine without it, then good. If you add the tag and the site renders great, you should never have to change it. If you want to support the latest/greatest standards, just bump the number up in the tag. Eventually, when sites are updated more completely, this sort of behavior will be dropped. For now, it's the only way to go. Developers, please do not be so closed-minded as to suppose that your sites are the only important ones. Many of the top vendors do not support standards mode, and it would be in poor taste to break their sites. (and remember that the Meta tag is not proprietary, and than other browsers have added real proprietary markup to their rendering engines)
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I beg you, please make the browser standards compliant. Website publishers have a responsibility, to check their web pages from time to time , with new browser versions coming. So will they, with IE8, and will rectify if their site breaks. You don't have to bother on behalf of web developers. And browser vendors also have one responsibility. To make a standards-compliant browser. So do it. Just do it. I beg you.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
This appears to be a Microsoft centric solution to a Microsoft centric problem which is exasperated by years of poor web authoring. Good web authoring is timeless regardless of what user agents come and go. Web authors who reley on poor user agents to judge visual feedback keep the good guys in jobs. This issue has little to do with web development and more to do with Microsoft's lack of willingness to engage. Suggest: push out a version of MS Firefox - save some money and everyone's time.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I have to add my vote that this is a bad idea. Some of you guys know me, I develop add-ins for IE, I love IE. This is a bad idea. It means that standards-compliant sites that exist today won't work as they should in IE8. Standards mode should be the default. You've set the precedent now with IE7 that people shouldn't rely on browser bugs. Continue that precedent. The rule for sites should become: if it's a browser (or a version of a browser) I don't know, I give them the most standards-compliant version of my content I have. IE more than any other browser has the power to enforce this. Please reconsider.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
How about this: give us standards mode by default for application/xhtml+xml documents?
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Why not just switch on this standards mode for XHTML pages that are served as application/xhtml+xml ? Everyone can do that with an apache directive or a one-liner in his PHP/ASP/blah code. That breaks absolutely no BC because IE today doesn't understand that one. Just be sure to send the same in the Accept request header, and all is fine. Switch it on for HTML5 and all following standards, too, and you don't have any BC nightmare.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I want to code to standards, not browser versions. The ideal web is a web where you don’t have to think about differences between browsers – because there are none. Now Microsoft is moving away from that ideal by introducing another rendering trigger, while there should be only one. A strict doctype should trigger standard-compliant rendering for all browsers. Until IE is not fully compliant (hopefully that won’t take too long), I’m all for <!—[if IE N]>.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Moralit� : renseignez sans erreur de frappe ni oubli une DTD HTML 4 ou XHTML et pensez aux meta et aux en-t�tes c�t� serveur et vous ferez avancer durablement l'impl�mentation des standards.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
So you are planning to give webdevelopers YET ANOTHER option to test. I'm sure everybody who is forced to work with IE is delighted. Ship Firefox by default in Windows 7, this will certainly be the cheaper option for both micosoft and the world over another testpath and development.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
You are not enablers, you are hinderers. You will look back with regret on these decisions.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Reading over the post and comments I remain unconvinced of this approach. Personally it seems like the best way is to just have a standards and quirks mode in IE8 and have quirks render like IE7 while standards mode is the true standards mode, no opt in or version targeting. Since there was already the rush as people with poorly coded sites (either through their own fault or because they inherited a behemoth with millions of pages) found that IE7 didn't have the same faults of IE6 and people fixed their work, I think that IE8 using the IE7 rendering mode for its quirks mode won't cause any real problem. The web is supposed to keep evolving and even self taught people should have picked up on this and learned some forward thinking code writing. It's so ridiculous to even be here, you guys were on the verge of being hero's fixing the web and then we suddenly get this post saying "no, sorry, you have to recode for our special needs to fix the web." Internet Explorer is not a beautiful and unique snowflake, it is not some princess that deserves special treatment. We've already had to treat it specially for long enough and we are getting fed up with it. We were happy when IE8 rendered the ACID2 test, but now finding out it takes special conditions that mean IE8 doesn't actually pass the test is like a kick in the teeth of our slowly starting to smile face. Do the right thing for once and shame on the WaSP for going along with this.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I'm still confused as of why other browser vendors could possibly be interested in also supporting this meta tag. Valid sites already work fine with these browsers, and they already have Quirks mode for bad sites. What's the point?
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I think that you worsening my worst nightmare, so now we have to code for Firefox and fix the layout for ie6 and ie7 and now ie8. I at least that ie8 will not need fixes if the code works right at firefox ... but I wouldn't bet on it. Can't you make the upgrade a requirement on ie6 and ie7 at least ?
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Why changing the current way? the brouwser should comply to the standards and not otherwise. In this case i'd rather see IE8 with a new way of parsing a website and not using new tags to use other rendering sources. @Microsoft; do it good for once... make your browser smaller and more strict! :)
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Joe has it right: >> If servers support a specific version of that protocol then you need to support that version by default and opt-in to new behavior - just like any client/server system. The cries for "make it work in super standards mode by default" must be coming from people who prefer to make their money by charging their clients to fix their sites when a new browser version becomes popular. I think the meta tag is a good solution. It lets your old code and pages continue working, while you can embrace the standards for new development. Then when you determine that your website's visitors have moved away from an old browser, you can update that code when you feel like it, instead of being thrown into a panic whenever IE++ happens. One counter-argument could be that it hurts alternative browsers by encouraging coding to the old quirks mode, not using a doc type, not using the meta tag, and then users complain when it doesn't render properly in Firefox/Safari/Whatever. My response is - how is this MS's fault? It is obviously the web developer's fault in this case, and he is the one who will look bad when his page breaks in other browsers. Second point - how is this different than the current situation? And how are those browsers faring right now?
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
So, just to be clear on this, if I were to use <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> ... this would cause quirks mode in IE 5, 6 and 7, correct? If so, then adding this new <meta> element would trigger standards mode in IE 8? If that is the case, then I can live with that, knowing that 5, 6 and 7 will use the same quirks that I already know about. I'm also all for other vendors implementing this, as then it wouldn't matter about the doctype triggering any quirks mode they have, as this could override that, allowing me to only have to deal with one standards mode, and older IE's quirks mode, because I'm confident in alternative browser users will more likely keep their software up to date.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Well, I think you're trying to make the best out of a bad situation. I applaud your efforts.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Hey Now Chris, Great Post, informative about IE8. I really enjoy the comments & how strongly people feel about the topic. Patiently waiting for IE8, Catto
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I work at a slightly odd place, and as is, and based on the rules of the place to use the latest and greatest tech on our sites I'll have to code in this new tag to every site, but wouldn't have to do anything if this tag wasn't required. I also don't see how anyone working within the standards like I do would have to recode anything if IE8 just worked like other browsers. Maybe you care to explain how IE8 finally working to the standard without an opt in would require standards compliant coders to suddenly have to recode their sites and charge for it? There's no reason or logic to your point as somehow you're coming up with a result of "good code + working browser = broken site + need to recode." I'm truly lost as to what's going on in your mind, please explain how IE8 working right could possible mean that the standista's need to recode their sites. I count myself among them and have been one of the people asking for the super standards mode to be the default, but it seems like you know something I don't. I want in on the secret so I can prepare my sites properly.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" /> is not valid html, and we have not so far seen anything from the ie group saying that they would handle xhtml. But one can hope :}
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I forgot to add in my previous comment: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/01/21/compatibility-and-ie8.aspx#7199332 I am assuming that IE 8 will be really standards compliment, in terms of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and DOM 1 and 2? If there are still bugs / missing features, then that's only going to make things more complicated.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I suppose if there's that many people still using IE5 then it's our unique position that lets us ignore IE5 users. Outside of the serious information we pretty much put everything on the web since we're supposed to be open, but in the end the sites are just intended to be used by our employees at various branches and it doesn't matter if someone outside the company can't see a page because they're using IE5, though according to our tracking no one has ever visited using IE5. Based on our openness policies I'll probably have to work on sites for IE5 compliance if anyone hits them and complains about it, but it hasn't happened yet, and after close to 2 years I don't see it happening at all at this point.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Wow! Thanks a bunch Chris! I've been working with these standards for years, commerce sites mostly, and have remained faithful to Msft. This is an excellent article!
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I say leave the meta tag out. I'm I the only one who build sites with specific css for ie? Example:   If ie8 comes out, then the code for ie6 and 7 won't effect it anyway. And if ie8 does break some websites, then us web designers can charge for the fixes anyway. There's no reason a company with interest in the internet would have a site that old anyway.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Chris, some simple questions:

What will IE8 do if it sees "IE=9"? Ignore the page? Do best-effort (IE8 super standards mode, presumably)? Quirks mode?
Since IE is tied so closely to the OS and I cannot run multiple versions, does this mean Microsoft is committed to supporting all IE rendering modes forever? You're currently at 3 and counting... Or do I have to go down the vmware route?
Since IE7- will ignore this meta tag, what are the recommended practices for those people who want to take advantage of IE8's "super standards" mode without locking out older users? User agent sniffing until IE8 footprint >> IE7- footprint? I, for one, have intentions of only using IE=edge (which is essentially what all other browser do atm). Thanks, Jeff

Anonymous
January 22, 2008
@Fallen we're still seeing about 15,000 hits a month for IE5 across the board for all our sites, although to be fair that's still only about 1% of browser usage, so to be honest its probably not going to be long before we do drop support for it
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
@AndyC: careful, you're in danger of not being recognized as sarcastic in this crowd. Thanks for the LOL, though. :)
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I think it's time to abandon IE and start over with something new, using the improved standards mode by default and actually maintaining it this time.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Ok, glad to finally know the trigger. But, what will this look like when IE9 comes out? <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8;IE=9" /> ? Also not mentioned, is what this affects, is this purely for better CSS? does it change the DOM Methods to work now too? And more specifically, if it doesn't, do I use the correct DOM Methods to update CSS properties now or do I use the broken methods to update the correct CSS properties now? Seriously missing info on this blog about JavaScript and DOM changes, fixes, and implementations in IE8.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Well did Opera 9 and FIrefox 3 introduced such metatags for their standards compatibility?? Then why is IE8 adding such a stupid metatag?? I mean at one time you are making standards compliance and then at the same time you are making something that still gives incentives website developers to continue making non standard complaint websites. You are not encouraging the web to be standards complaint. If you are thinking about backward compatibility, then the web will not advance. It is because of MS's stupid decision not to support standards at the first place that there are so many non standard complaint websites. Now again MS is doing the same thing which is forcing a developer to do something that many developers will not notice now. Yeah when IE7 came out, some websites were broken. Are they still broken now? Force IE8 to support standards mode by default and educate people about web standards .... yeah many websites will break but ultimately in the long run it will benefit the web.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I am really happy that Microsoft is now trying to adopt web standards into their products. But I have a suggestion that would improve IE8 even further. Instead of requiring every website that is standard compliant to add a new meta tag that ist IE8 specific, please only require old websites for IE6 to add a tag like IE=6. This will also solve the problem but IE8 will be able to treat millions of standard compliant websites correctly without modification.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Thanks Chris. One follow-up question on your answers to mine. If Microsoft is not committed to supporting IE7 quirks mode "forever", than when will you pull the plug? When you see the number of pages drop below a certain percentage? Same question applies to "IE8 super standards" mode. Hypothetically, if IE11 doesn't support anything lower than IE9, what would happen if it saw "IE=8"? This is an important question - if I, as an author, include "IE=8" in my meta tag, will I find 5 years from now that Microsoft browsers will fail to render it in exactly IE=8 mode? What will it do? To me, this is the incentive to use "IE=edge" without any IE-specific quirks in my page (that is, if I can get away with it).
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Another suggestion (if it's already been mentioned here, consider this a vote): have authors label their pages with a <em>date</em> instead of a version. It would be vendor-neutral and thus less evil™. An opt-out of real-standards mode would be preferable, and I can see standards-incompliant web developers happily adding such an opt-out if they're assured it'll be the last compatibility update they'll have to make.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Drew posted the bestest suggestion so far. I hope Chris Wilson et al considers this seriously: "Make it an OPTION to work in IE7 or IE6 or whatever mode. But make it DEFAULT to run IE8 "super standards" (this should be called standards mode) mode. If, namely, a company or business is running on old software, they can upgrade to IE8, and change the OPTION to run as it used to. But for all the millions of home users out there, let them run the latest and greatest. Why do I have to tell/make them (in the way of a meta tag) to be current? Why do all the web developers in the world have to "be in the know" and know to put an IE8 meta tag in? Why can't the few businesses that still need IE5.5 modes be notified to change the OPTION for IE7 mode? The people that need backwards compatibility will be "very aware" of how an update will affect their company anyway... why can't this be their burden and not everyone elses?"
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
It would be great to hear what kind of overhead this decision is imposing on ongoing IE development. I see the problem you are trying to address but we won't know until IE8 ships whether development departments choose to adopt this tag.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
This has bad idea written all over it. Do we only need this tag for HTML4 pages and will HTML5+ be rendered in standards mode? (the real standards, not yours) And what will IE9 do with "IE=7" and "IE=10"?
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I don't understand why "Quirks Mode" can't be adapted to compensate for its existing functionality AND the "IE7" mode that exists today. This would mean that STANDARDS MODE is exactly THAT--- STANDARDS COMPLIANT--- while Quirks Mode is exactly that--- NON-STANDARD, and possibly quirky. Just my thought on the matter, but the whole meta tag opt-in idea seems really stupid.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
It might be useful if the File - Properties window had a field for render mode. It would then be obvious to developers whether a document was being displayed in IE7 standards compliance mode, IE8 standards compliance mode or quirks mode.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
So this means the ACID2 test does NOT work in IE8 because it doesn't have that tag?
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
As a follow up-- I think what I dislike about this approach is this: I have to choose to add a non-standards compliant meta tag into my code to make a browser render in standards compliant mode. Doesn't this seem like a bad idea to anyone on the IE team?
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Chris Wilson, what's to say that html editors won't include <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge"> by default in a couple of years time? You weren't expecting them to include strict doctypes...
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Make <!DOCTYPE html> a trigger for the IE8 mode at least, so that we can live without the stupid meta tag for a few more years. (Optimally, IE8 would be as good as Gecko/Opera/Webkit, so that the meta tag switch can actually be dropped as future updates won't break the world.)
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I can think of nothing more detrimental to the evolution of the web as a medium than your transparent attempt to hard-code browser sniffing. You've done more damage to forward compatibility with that one meta tag than every previous version of Internet Explorer combined.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
"* Hope that IE's market share continues to shrink to the point where it is significantly less relevant, and site authors don't particularly care about this behavior." That's an interesting point. Once the market share is low enough, people won't care about this crud, which means that sites working in a modern browser but not IE7 will never work in a future IE release, either. That will be the last nail in the coffin, then. Frankly, I can't wait for this to happen. :)
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Kind of silly, but thanks for the heads up. Keep us informed!
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Oh, and why not: IE=8+ IE=8.1-9 etc.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
The idea of having a meta tag to support "super standards mode" is ridiculous... It's been suggested numerous times above, I just wanted to get my vote in as well: "Make it an OPTION to work in IE7 or IE6 or whatever mode. But make it DEFAULT to run IE8 in standards mode. No room for argument there... it just needs to eb that way.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Before you go any further about complaining about how catastrophic a meta tag is and take the 5 minutes to configure your server right now. There, done, over with. No babies, kittens, or baby kittens have died as a result of you having taken the 5 minutes to do this.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I do have one question though, will a document using the IE7 rendering engine still receive an IE7 user agent string (and associated DOM support) or will some stuff be different?
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Sure, depending on your set up it might take only 5 minutes, but of course no one was complaining about how hard this is going to be to add, the complaint is that it's the wrong fix for an ongoing problem when the right fix is going to just as easy for MS to apply and even easier for the rest of us. And you obviously missed the real conversation about this based on your comment, since there are serious concerns about if this will harm the state of web development even more than past IE versions have. Having read the real conversations on this matter I have to say there are valid concerns about this. Perhaps it would've been wise to get all the information before telling people off?
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
WRONG DEFAULTS! Ok I can respect helping old schooler's sites stay functioning, but seriously, the default value of your silly new header should be EDGE. I will NEVER EVER set this header. I will always write STANDARDS BASED sites and if IE wants to take advantage of my code, it will have to use its newest rendering engine. Fix the default to EDGE, and you can keep playing on the web, otherwise, fade into irrelevance.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
The META tag approach is what should have been done in the first place, and I have thought so from the beginning: I have always thought that using the DOCTYPE was the wrong way to do it. Now we are stuck with two approaches. Sigh.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Chris, you are responding to the comments but you are not really answering them. It just looks like you are trying to bash your point of view across when everyone can see this is a stupid idea.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
You're not responding to one of the most important questions being asked: what about XHTML? Is IE8 finally supporting XHTML? If it isn't, personally I think all of this discussion is moot.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
STANDARDS, STANDARDS, STANDARDS... STANDARDS, STANDARDS, STANDARDS... STANDARDS, STANDARDS, STANDARDS... STANDARDS, STANDARDS, STANDARDS... STANDARDS, STANDARDS, STANDARDS... STANDARDS, STANDARDS, STANDARDS... STANDARDS, STANDARDS, STANDARDS... ......... ......... .........
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
When IE8 encounters web pages that contains workarounds, it should notify the user with a warning icon next to the address bar or something. That would "force" at least some web pages to repent and switch to standard code. I can just see the look of the developers eyes when the boss wants to know why their customers see an "This page uses outdated technologies" or something...
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I'm not going to rant on about this meta tag because I don't want to get upset. Surely the "better" solution will be worked out soon for the "opt-in" standards mode but I digress. What I want to know is the more important issue. This "opt-in" trigger only tells the browser that we want the correct standards-mode compliance, but it doesn't specify whether this is CSS or HTML, or JS, or a DOM compliance! Opera has fixed bug 152 in their latest beta builds for document.getElementById which means that from now on in Opera it will work as designed as per the specifications. {oh and for the developers that dont know here is the bug 152} http://webbugtrack.blogspot.com/2007/08/bug-152-getelementbyid-returns.html Will this be fixed in IE8 too? I want to know if my conditional comments that wrap JS file includes for IE5.5 - IE7 need to be updated to also include IE8? We need to know this kind of info soon as every time we deliver code to our customers, we need to ensure that we are not making additional HTTP Requests if we don't need to (because they are very expensive when you multiply by thousands of users) thanks
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Have the IE team tried out the internal build of IE 8 with standards mode 'on' by default for strict doctype site, and seen the results? Care to share any particular sites with us that would break if IE 8 used the current doctype trigger for standards mode? I would have though that a lot of sites that opt-in to standards mode for IE 7 would already be aware of what they were doing!
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
What a horrible idea. Why can't you just admit that the previous versions of IE got it wrong? My mother always taught me to admit my mistakes, not try to spin them off as new standards. I understand that MS confused the situation and people started to believe in the new standard that was "quirks mode" but it is just MORONIC to insist that people continue to develop using that standard. When will MS learn that they need to move forward on the subject and admit they have been wrong. Can you please just fix the problem and follow the standards set. People will be angry at first but in the long run of the internet, it will all work out just fine. Really...
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
MSIE continues to be the only browser which expects web programmers to sort out its errors themselves. MSIE continues to be the only browser which is universally panned outside of its birthplace. It is decisions like this which reinforce both points.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
@cwilso: I think you could put a lot of minds here on ease if you would finally promise support the "application/xml+xhtml" mime type in IE8 and then not only force xhtml validation but also standard compilant rendering, even without the meta-tag...
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I still haven't seen a response to simply enabling the functionality for the application/xhtml+xml. Isn't that the easiest solution while avoiding the whole meta nonsense?
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
It is a bad idea and a foul compromise. Ultimately it will fail the same way all the "band aids" in prior versions have failed before. Browsers should expose brokend web sites, not try to "fix" them. Please reconsider the "meta" idea and please do implement full standards compliant mode as default mode. Please do expose broken web sites. Otherwise you are making things just worse.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
One more question: when will we know if IE 8 will run on XP SP2 or not?
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
<LET THEM BREAK IF THEY CAN'T BE BOTHERED TO MAINTAIN THEIR SITES!> Spoken like a truly arrogant programmer; someone who doesn't 'get' it. These site owners with their heads lodged up their posteriors (which I can at least spell) are your CUSTOMERS. Losing sight of that fact is why your jobs keep moving offshore.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Well, It seems that by the majority of people here, Microsoft can't do anything right. Well, just remember, this companies technologies and "quirks" keep you employeed.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
This is the absolute worst idea the IE team has had since...the last one. It really would be best if you'd just discontinue IE development entirely. Seriously. Think about it.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Have you ever considered what the security and maintenance ramifications of keeping these old, quirky rendering modes in IE are? You'll have the same situation as Microsoft does with its multiplicity of MS XML versions and Office "compatibility options": the constant need to plug security holes across a range of redundant, obsolete products, and much higher development costs to boot. Resources that could be used to fix the one standards mode will instead go to keeping up an aged, creaking codebase. I understand not wanting to "break the web," but why not make a clean break? Unless you intend on keeping around these dinosaur modes behaviors forever, at some point developers WILL have to update their code. Since they're going to have to do it anyway, why not do it sooner than later? At the very least, the IE team could announce a timetable: quirks and IE7 "standards" mode will be supported through IE8 but quirks will be dropped in IE9, and IE7 in IE10. Then developers will know how long they can persist in the old behaviors, and when they should recode their sites. Think of it as a product support lifecycle.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Nice idea, yet another 'switch' to make it behave like it should, this now means we get to target to 3 different versions of IE plus probably 2 versions of FF (or gecko) plus the others (webkit khtml etc) if you care, yes all those as they all render 'standards' differently. Stop this madness, please FORCE people to update their IE browser, you have done it to half your users with IE7 already, make it compatible then help out a naive public by making the upgrade for them.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Will the new I-can't-believe-its-not-standards mode be the default for <!DOCTYPE html>? What about XHTML MIME type?
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Peter Michaux beat me to it! If this problem only affects Internet Explorer due to the fact that sites check for the agent string or whatever, then just radically change the agent string!
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
It would be great to hear what kind of overhead this decision is imposing on ongoing IE development. I see the problem you are trying to address but we won't know until IE8 ships whether development departments choose to adopt this tag.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I want to code to standards, not browser versions. The ideal web is a web where you don’t have to think about differences between browsers – because there are none. Now Microsoft is moving away from that ideal by introducing another rendering trigger, while there should be only one. A strict doctype should trigger standard-compliant rendering for all browsers. Until IE is not fully compliant (hopefully that won’t take too long), I’m all for <!—[if IE N]>.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
This is a bad idea, and evidence that Microsoft doesn't get it, or is willfully destructive of progress currently made with standards.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
It is most important that standards be followed. If you want to take care of the "old sites" that lack developers or lack the ability to be updated, then figure out a way to "detect" them and use backwards compatibility mode only then. Use standards compatibility mode by default. Allow the user a simple tag to put in that puts the browser into backwards compatibility mode instead. Create a "how to guide" for people to use when their websites don't work any more because they were built poorly to begin with, or create a small program that will "patch" a website with the right tag to make it render in backwards compatibility mode so that there is no excuse for someone using a poorly written website to not at least patch their site. Supporting standards going forward should mean that you are actively trying to bring your crapastic browser into compliance with the rest of the world. MicroShaft doesn't get to set the standards. I don't get to set the standards. We just get to follow them.... if there is something wrong with the standards then we petition the group of people or join the group of people to try and fix it. Simple. The hardest part is in detecting which websites break when standards are applied...but I bet if some energy and thought was spent on it, it could be done with 99% accuracy.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Chris, after a quick survey of the negative criticism (most of which I applaude) I didn't find the following flaw of your approach mentioned: What struck me most (apart from the technique in itself) is the opt-in part of the story. | “Standards mode” remains the same as IE7, and compatible with current content. | If you (the page developer) really want the best standards support IE8 can give, you can get it by inserting a simple <meta> element. That is a completely bad approach. I, for one, will surely never add such a tag to my source. And here the problems just begin: It is nice that the proposed technique is of the http-equiv type. Therefore, short-sighted people could just use the "cleaner" approach of sending the corresponding HTTP header. So, what do you get? I send the IE=edge header (or IE=8 header, if you prefer). You visit the page with IE 9 (everything is fine). You save the document or mirror the site locally (arbitrary client, say, wget). You open it with IE 9: Gone is the header. Broken by design. Bubax
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Zuk�nftige Browser sollen durch einen Kompatibilit�tsmodus sicherstellen, dass alte Websites auch mit neuen Browser-Versionen korrekt dargestellt werden.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Today first draft of HTML5 published and they are going to HTML5, go on, fetch them :>
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
DON'T DO THIS! We don't need another html or meta tags, we want even less tags for a good web development. Here's the solution for this problem: No DOCTYPE - Quirks mode DOCTYPE Transitional - Standards mode (IE7) DOCTYPE Strict - IE8 standards mode
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Web developers would much rather the short term pain of making their sites standards compliant, knowing that it would be a one-time job, than having to support this abomination. It is highly demoralising as your “solution” gives no resolution, has no end-in-sight and will further fragment the web. What you propose is the antithesis of what standards compliancy strives to achieve. It is absurd, and a fallacy, to believe that IE can become standards compliant through non-compliancy. It would give me great pleasure to go though the sites that I maintain if they were to break with the release of IE8, knowing that it would be for the greater good. I am sure others feel the same.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
@pete gamache - have you read my post? Our point is to NOT make web developers sort out our errors themselves, nor serve penance for the things we've gotten wrong in the past. @bubax - yes, I personally believe using the "edge" keyword is a bad idea in any production code. Use the current version of IE, and if you wish your site to upgrade, test it when a new version comes out and turn it on. @Nick Lowe - how can you claim to speak for all web developers? You do understand that a lot of the web is generated by tools (many of which opt content generated by them in to the current "standards" mode, while expecting IE to be broken), right?
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
If you're so worried about "breaking" old sites, why not just build an IE-CLASSIC toggle button into IE8 that switches on the old rendering engine on the fly so that users can trigger it when an old site breaks? Something like: "IE8... now with an IE-Classic mode for viewing old-school sites." Heck, it even sounds like an added feature. I can envision the Press Release now. "We here at Microsoft are dedicated to bringing you the next generation of Web 2.0 surfing. We've made IE so advanced that sometimes an older website can't keep up with our innovation. So, if you ever come across a website that doesn't look the way it should, you can correct it with our IE-CLASSIC button and make the site look the way it was intended to look." Yippeee! Done, end of story. Everybody's happy.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Standards mode should mean standards mode. IE6 and IE7's "standards" modes should be opt-in and require the meta tag, not that of IE8. That IE6's "standards" mode was horribly broken should not hobble us all forever.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
So as far as I can see, what we will need to do is go back to browser sniffing at the server, and implement this meta tag either in the markup or in the header, dynamically at the server from the browser version in the HTTP request. Or have the frowned-upon 'edge' value. This is so we always get the best rendering from whatever version of IE is present, because quite frankly, I shouldn't need to care what version they have. I quite like the idea of super Platinum Diamond Gold ABBA standards as default with the application/xhtml+xml mime type, that IE does not implement in its most current version, 7. This way standardistas finally get XHTML support and best rendering possible, and keeps rendering consistent for those who don't care about the latest and greatest.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Standards mode should be the default. If people can run old programs in 'Windows 95 compatibility mode' on Vista, why can't they run old sites in 'IE6 compatibility mode' in IE8? All these badly programmed sites you want to cater for so desperately ARE already broken. Their developers have already accepted the fact that they don't render exactly as intended in Firefox etc. If they can live with that, they can live with IE8 beta too.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
John Resig (of JQuery) weighs in on the madness of the new Meta tag: http://ejohn.org/blog/meta-madness/ It isn't pretty. But, it's a good read.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
This is ridiculous. Standards mode should be the default if the doctype is declared. If the developer's code doesn't match their doctype, that's their problem, not Explorer's! This is utterly insane.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Just more evidence that the IE team needs to have their marketshare taken away. You're a plague on the web.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
"The message I get from your proposal is that Microsoft cares more about its (short term) IE marketshare than the (immense) difficulties that web developers have to deal with today." Exactly! I couldn't have said it better myself. Super-standard should be the default, period.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
It is ironic really that this web page and your own does not remotely meet the standards. How can we expect a standards compliant browser !!. http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.msdn.com%2Fie%2Farchive%2F2008%2F01%2F21%2Fcompatibility-and-ie8.aspx%23comments http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.msdn.com%2Fcwilso%2F
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
@cwilso: "how can you claim to speak for all web developers?" Fair point. "You do understand that a lot of the web is generated by tools (many of which opt content generated by them in to the current "standards" mode, while expecting IE to be broken), right?" You were prepared to make disruptive changes with IE7. Surely the same arguments apply. What is proposed is only pragmatic when considered in the short-term. It is the lesser of two evils, being better for the long term prospects of the web, to have an opt-out for compliancy rather than an opt-in. Developers will always work following entropic principles. (Do the least work to get by.) So the reality is that if IE7 had not broken websites, those websites would not have changed. Pain -will- result from an opt-out or opt-in model. Opting out of compliancy merely defers that pain. Surely it is better to grasp the nettle now rather than later!
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I haven't read all the comments - I hope you guys do. FWIW I echo the majority of the comments I did read, this is a bad idea. So I test my site in IE 8, maybe make a few mods, decide to go wild and add the meta tag, then realise I've just broken my site for all my customers that are still using IE 7/IE 6. This is a joke right? I have an expectation that as long as my pages are standards-based then as usage of older browsers drops I will eventually be able to remove any sniffing/conditional code. Honestly, I will never use your stupid meta tag and I will mandate that it will not be used in my organisation.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
@cwilso: Sorry, I meant to say... Having an opt-in model for compliancy merely defers the pain that developers must face.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
This suggestion is bad, very bad.

The requirement of an additional code for enabling the “standards mode” will punish those who have actually built their sites according to the standards in the first place, and applaud to those who didn’t. Is this fair?
Why do we need an extra "Preferred Browser Version Definition" (BROVER)? This would be a double standard — browsers would have to consider not only the DOCTYPE, but also the preferred BROVER, which would result in an inconsistent rendering among different browsers. Absurd. The rest of my points areWhy do we need an extra Preferred Browser Version Definition (BROVER)? This would be a double standard — browsers would have to consider not only the DOCTYPE, but also the preferred BROVER, which would result in an inconsistent rendering among different browsers. Absurd. The rest of my arguments are in the blog post: <a href="http://konstruktors.com/blog/understanding-web/78-browser-version-targeting-vs-the-web-standards/">Browser Version Targeting vs. the Web Standards</a>

Anonymous
January 22, 2008
If you can add a META tag, is it also possible to add that tag in the form of a response header? Because that would enable easy mass conversion of whole websites. Just add one configuration rule to either IIS or Apache...
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
What about turning on standards compliant mode for those who are serving content as xhtml strict AND sending the correct mime type. No one will accidentally do this !
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I'm coming round to the idea that this is workable if the default is changed to IE8 - standards compliance mode - the meta then provides a fix for any site that breaks. Having to add it to all my nice standards compliant sites with the conditional comments and special css files for IE just to get 'standard' functionality in IE would be far too painful. "...late 2006, roughly half of the top 200 US web sites were in “standards mode”..." surely that's increased since then? Let the minority of non-standard sites do the fixing please. Put the default to IE8 and standards mode!
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
IE7 was a huge improvement over IE6, and I had so much hope for IE8. However, you have now shattered that into many pieces. Sadly, Microsoft either just does not get it, or is really not interested in standards. There is no need for a third rendering mode, especially one that needs to be opted in to to do the right thing. The Doctype is enough: if it is set to standards mode, then... well, render it in standards mode. In this new IE8 solution, it seems that we all lose. All properly designed, standard-conformant pages will need to explicated opt in to the IE8-specific standards mode. It's almost like you are trying to punish those developers who designed their pages to be standard-conformant. A non-conformant page should render incorrectly. Stop trying to support them. It is ruining the experience for everyone else. With this information, it seems clear that IE8 did NOT pass Acid2 since Acid2 is only set to standards mode, not the IE8-specific standards mode. I'm not sure how much more of this I can take. It may just be time to give up on IE entirely. You just do not get it.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I have a suggestion for you. deploy IE8 onto XP as well. Please. We need to get the vast majority of IE users to have the most standards compliant IE possible. Forcing an upgrade will help as well.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
If you're not planning to support application/xhtml+xml properly, please don't release IE8. This is the one absolute "MUST" feature for IE8.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
This is exactly what I've been afraid of ever since Chris started on a 'switch' for browserversions in the HTML5 WG. This is really hurting compatibility and interoperability between other browservendors and therefor can only be seen as an MS monopoly play on the browser market. Having to opt-in to standards compliance, wereas other browser already provide that as a default, is a slap in the face of all serieus webdevelopers. You really need to reconsider your commitments...
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
<aho> ma fein ins blog gespammt
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January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Having read most of the blog chatter appearing on the Net, as of the time of this post, regarding this issue, <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/01/21/compatibility-and-ie8.aspx#7203041">Mystified's IE Classic suggestion</a> is brilliant. Considering that a browser upgrade of IE requires compelling reasons, such as its interface, and the browser upgrade not breaking corporate Intranets, could such a concept be practically applied? I don't know. I am not a browser developer. Wilson, what are your thoughts, please? Thank you.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Backward compatibility is important, but this implementation is flawed. You've redefined "standard" in an IE browser as "IE7". If I don't insert the meta declaration, I get IE7 as it exists in 2007/8 forever? Which patch level? Hotfix? How do I declare that I want this page to be rendered "according to the standards, now or in the future"? Will you guarantee that this meta element really is HTTP equivalent and will be honored if it's in the HTTP headers? Will Microsoft's server side infrastructure generate this meta element? If not, when will support for it be added? How many IE versions of "standard" will IE support in the future? Does this apply just to the rendering? What about the DOM? Javascript? CSS? Event models? If one frame is in "IE7" mode and another is in "IE8" or even (gasp) "standard" mode, which frame is the one that applies when cross-frame activity occurs? Can you at least make the declaration more flexible than "="? Maybe the ability to express a range?
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
"Microsoft, making things more complicated than they need be." (tm)
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
@Craig M: "... @Alex: there's a registry key that can force on IE8 standards mode, yes. No recommended for average use, obviously. ..." http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/01/21/compatibility-and-ie8.aspx#7202029 Personally, I do think a UI option (Tools->Internet Options->Advanced or something) to set IE8 standards mode would be nice, and it should ultimately be set some months after IE8's release (6?) as the default if unspecified by the user/page. Ultimately the user should dictate what rendering they want if they know the consequences of such a setting, and their rendering should be able to override the page's. The mass Internet heart attack here gave me a good laugh though.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
No, no, no, don't do it Chris. Don't do this please. You're saying. "MS responsibility to deliver both interoperability (web pages working well across different browsers) and backwards compatibility (web pages working well across different versions of IE). We need to do both." Why, why, why? And if you must, why can't one comment appear instead of a hundred million IE meta elements? /* [IE standard] */ I will support you with this on the CSS WG list. I do apologize Chris for referring to you as Colin for half a year on my site.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Two steps forwards, one step back. This is very, very weak.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
As I will have to make sites work with at least IE6 & 7 anyway, why should I bother putting the meta tag in? By the time the market share of IE6 & IE7 is low enough to drop them from the supported Browsers, the sites I build now (and probably still in 2 years) are long outdated and replaced by re-designs. So I think this whole Idea will lead to less change in development: Building standard conform sites without the meta tag and then all the CC's needed to make it work in IE5 / 6 / 7 (as all the higher IE will render like IE 7 anyway). Why should I test on another IE, when you promise me it will work like IE7 by default AND I have to make it work in IE7 anyway as well. I wonder why you bother fixing bugs in the rendering engine, when the average site won't take any advantage? If this "feature" would have been part of IE7, how many developers would have said "don't bother about IE7, if you don't put the meta tag, it renders the same as IE6, so just fix it for IE6".
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
As some have previously mentioned, the Standards compliant mode should be the default. Anything else is paradoxical at best... Every decent developer nowadays build sites using Firefox, Safari, or Opera, THEN goes back and adjusts to make it work in the "most buggy browser in the World" or was it "the most popular browser in the World"? I forgot... ;) Anyway, if the concern is backward compatibility with poorly designed websites, then a drastically different User Agent string would seem to make a lot more sense to me... Of course, my personal opinion on this subject is to just let those websites break. If they already have another standard compliant version, it won't be too hard to make it serve IE8 too, and if they don't, then it's the perfect occasion to clean up the web... I seriously don't think the whole market share issue is relevant. When a site breaks, people always blame the site, not the browser...
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
That any sane browser would REQUIRE NON-STANDARD META TAGS to trigger a standards engine, seems to be an overwhelming sentiment from the posters above. Grep the page for "default" and see the chorus of voices. All browsers must be in Standards Mode by Default. The web evolves, and requiring opt-in action by beginners and standards-naive developers to use the up to date standards, works against the democratic nature of the web. So a commitment to Standards Mode by Default would make IE relevant again. Otherwise, why bother?
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
guys, do you really believe that this decision is technical? all Microsoft decisions are 80% PR oriented ... they horribly fear bad press long life to real standards, long life to Firefox, Opera and the true browsers amen orlando
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
If all the people posting comments on this website spent a bit of time moving all their friends onto Firefox, perhaps the problems would be far less? I try to like IE but even the first 5 seconds of using it annoy me when it over-rides the URL I start typing.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I understand the MSFT goal, but I don't understand why you can't change the agent string. Can you please elaborate on why that's a problem?
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
..and I was just starting to think that guys @ M$ are finally going to be sane.. but nope, I was wrong. well, you can stick your meta element somewhere, guys. :)
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Chris Wilson, by choosing to use meta tags to specify standards support, you are recreating the doctype, rendering both your new creation and the existing doctype meaningless, as by being the solution to a new version of the same problem that was previously solved by the doctype, the use of meta tags to specify standards support will share the same fate as the doctype, meaninglessness. By taking this course of action, you are only prolonging the problem that you believe you are correcting, much like a drunkard, as by drinking alcohol, he only prolongs the problem he believes he is correcting, which is his self imposed inability to deal with the problems and consequences he must face if he faces reality. Mr. Wilson, I am not sure if you are a fan of Star Trek, but there was this one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, where the enterprise was caught in a time warp, and the enterprise repeated the same day for weeks until its crew was finally able to break the cycle upon realizing what was happening. In the context of that episode, the enterprise is the internet, the crew of the enterprise is the IE team and the use of a new doctype because the previous one is used in webpages that are compatible with the previous version of IE, but not the actual standard, is what traps the enterprise in the time warp.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
This new trick will only stall development. Why produce standards-compliant code when you can use a tag that declares your trashy excuse for HTML "compatible with IE6"? Instead of producing a browser that supports standards well, Microsoft tries to futz around with the way the web works. No good.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
<<--MSIE is not the only HTML/CSS client in the world.-->> No, just far and away the most popular one. Windows is the most popular OS because of their heavy commitment to backward compatibility. What do you think that suggests about how important backward compatibility is? <<-- Instead of producing a browser that supports standards well, Microsoft tries to futz around with the way the web works. -->> Precisely the point. Microsoft is building a browser for the actual web, not for the so-called standards. Ever notice that the "standards" are mostly written by IE's competitors, who have little marketshare and are just oh so bitter that they haven't figured out what matters to users yet. Debating here is pointless... we'll see what share looks like in 5 years. I'll tell you where I'd put my money...
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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January 22, 2008
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January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Just make one toggle button next to the address bar that says: [IE Classic] Problem solved. Go to bed.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
@Ron > How do I declare that I want this > page to be rendered "according to > the standards, now or in the future"? <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge"> > How many IE versions of "standard" > will IE support in the future? There are 3 (2?) right now, if I understood correctly. Or even 4 with "edge". <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=6"> I'm not sure this "IE=6" standards mode is actually going to be supported by MSIE 8. <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7"> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8"> Regards, Gérard
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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January 22, 2008
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January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
@SchizoDuckie: Contrary to your statement, at least Firefox requires a recent doctype to trigger standards mode. See http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Mozilla's_DOCTYPE_sniffing for the official docs. What I find ironic is that (according to the link above) Firefox actually has three modes (similar to what is being proposed by the IE team): standards, quirks and "almost standards".
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Paul asks: " Which would you choose? a) An opt-in IE 8 mode with new features plus hundreds of javascript, DOM and rendering bugs fixed? Possibly even with lots of old IE-specific stuff dropped (document.all, etc). b) New features only." I'd chose c.): c.) Let Microsoft fix the mess they've got themselves into. We continue building standards compliant site, and advocating the use of standards compliant browsers. We owe Microsoft's clients nothing. All those companies that built intranets using proprietary protocols like Active X and Internet Explorer 6 lock-in - they are getting exactly what they deserved. Its clear this proposal is a statement that Microsoft cannot support both its IE-locked-in-market or web standards. That failure is entirely due to Microsoft, and we, as web standards compliant web developers owe them nothing. Firefox, Safari and Opera didn't require hand holding and special attention to get to their current states. Internet Explorer shouldn't be given preferential treatment, and standards compliancy shouldn't be a second class citizen. This is not our problem. We should do nothing to encourage this tactic.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I'm curious where Microsoft finds the sort of developers/managers/marketers that came up with this, and thought it was a great idea.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I guess still try to render the website correctly, but display a small sign that "This website breaks the web!" will serve them well enough. At least the managements who read about it will ask the lazy web designers to fix their pages...
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Please make fully standards compliant mode the default. People who want to code to a specific browser version can use your meta tag when you backport it to IE6 and IE7. Web pages without the meta tag should render in the best way possible, so IE users finally get to see what Firefox, Opera and Konqueror users already have.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
<<I'm curious where Microsoft ... thought it was a great idea.>> I think the consensus is that this is actually the least bad option out of a lot of worse choices. It's pretty clear from the comments here that MOST remarks were by people who didn't bother to read both this post and the linked post, or didn't understand either. Now, note I didn't say ALL... there are some legitimate "I understand why you did this but I think you should break sites" remarks. Those remarks indicate a good understanding of standards and why they matter, and a poor understanding of the market for web browsers in particular and software in general.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
cwilso: "Our point is to NOT make web developers sort out our errors themselves, nor serve penance for the things we've gotten wrong in the past." How is making every standards-compliant web developer add a non-standard tag to their page to get it to render correctly in IE8 not making them serve penance for IE's non-standards-compliance in the past? Web designers who work to the standards can often develop in FF, Safari or Opera and have their design work in all three, then they have to spend extra time making their design work in IE. And why would users upgrade to IE8 if it doesn't offer better rendering by default? Particularly since designers will just design for IE7 forever, since that is what you are etching into stone with this decision. In case it's not clear: Make the standards mode default, and IE7 or IE8 modes opt-in, so people who have done testing and know they need to be rendered by a specific version can ask for it. Don't punish the developers who create pages that work in every other standards-compliant browser out there.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
@Ted Do other browser vendors have a poor understanding of the market for web browsers? I mean, since they are opposed to this as well...
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
So IE8 will not pass the ACID2 test? It needs to display the result using the default configuration of the browser and without change to the source code of the page. (That question has been left unanswered in previous comment by MS)
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
It seems to me that Microsoft WANTED to be the Dominant Browser very badly in the late 90's. Now we see what they've done with it and it stinks. First they "break the Web" with IE7. This won't ever go away because so many pages are already written for IE6. Do you think those pages have no value and should be tossed out like Windows 95? That's Information, History, Source Documentation, etc. Get it! Some of those Pages are important stuff!! So after they "break the Web" now they are forcing us all to use their New and Improved BROKEN Browser. I LIKE INTERNET EXPLORER 6 SP1! Why are you guys at Microsoft so obsessed with fixing stuff that works fine? Maybe you could better use the Developers you've got to make a Secure OS. Vista is a mess after all the delays and promises. In the end it seems Microsoft is more focused on what it wants than what serves it's customers.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
"If you (the page developer) really want the best standards support IE8 can give, you can get it by inserting a simple <meta> element. Aaron gives more details on this in his article." That is one of the worst ideas I have ever encountered. Why should we need to use EXTRA markup to tell one particular browser to do things THE RIGHT WAY? Please stop polluting markup with Microsoft-specific garbage. I think you should support standards, period. Anything that doesn't work properly in a standards-compliant browser was poorly made and for the sake of long-term forward compatibility, it should be allowed by Microsoft to break. Anything important will be brought up to spec and will likely work more reliably across all standards-compliant browsers. Microsoft can help FIX some of the damage it has helped sloppy, lazy, browser-specific Web developers do to the Web by supporting interoperable standards, so why perpetuate poor code and markup instead? For a giant corporation with a long history of throwing its weight around regardless of what anyone else thinks about it, you seem strangely set on pandering to the absolute worst Web developers and publishers in the world. Why is that? Do you fear what might happen if most of the Web suddenly became interoperable instead of remaining tied to Microsoft browsers through old browser-specific code?
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
This reminds me of the "IE7+" debacle: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/05/26/608255.aspx "I want to announce that we will be naming the version of IE7 in Windows Vista “Internet Explorer 7+”." Three months later: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/08/04/688899.aspx "I had mentioned a while back that we planned to call the version of IE7 in Windows Vista “Internet Explorer 7+”. Well, the feedback we got on the blog was overwhelming – many of you didn’t like it. So, as we’ve said on our website, we heard you." Please hear us out again!
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
@Paul: You know that Microsoft was a part of the group that decided the official standards right? To say that the standard is decided by the competitors is complete nonsense
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
In current situation there is no way to upgrade to IE 8 without breaking some sites. It is unfortunate, but it is reality. However, to minimize affected users you should do following things with IE 8. These methods are all suggested before here but not yet collected to one post:

Use quirks mode if no DOCTYPE is found
Use most recent standard mode if DOCTYPE is declared
- Change the browser string in IE 8 * - that way sites which use browser sniffing will not send old IE specific code to IE 8.
And as a last resort for sites which will be broken: Sites must fix their HTML with the new X-UA-Compatible meta element or better yet start to use standards.

Anonymous
January 22, 2008
We, the web developers, do not want any more special treatments for IE only, so PLEASE DO NOT force us to add some kind of opt-in meta-data to get IE to work like all other browsers... We are already fed up with those ugly conditional comments we have to add because IE is the only browser that needs complementary CSS-files, all other browsers can use the same CSS-file.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
IF you of some reason choose to add this idiotic meta-tag, I still hope people just have to add it to their page when using transitional or no doctype, NOT when using the strict doctype?
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
And guys what I really don't understand is why a development network is not able to create a thread based board for comments. This page is HUGE already. Benny
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Just do the W3C standard correctly this time. No additional tags, etc. needed. If with that IE8 project will be well inside budget, consider adding special tag for IE6 render mode and do that one too. I think doing anything with IE7 rendering is waste of resources, IE7 is not spread enough, and those pages who did adapt already to it's new quirks are very likely changing often enough to "adapt" quickly to full W3C IE8 anyway (actually they are very likely already adapted because of firefox/opera/safari/konqueror/...). Please, stop doing these "Microsoft product behaves differently". Stick to standard.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Please reconsider... I design for standards and manage many websites, I don't want to add a metatag to each one. Also, imagine if every browser behaved like this... This is plain stupid.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I'm not comfortable with this idea with linking a page to a particular browser. And I appreciate that the IE team have a tough job... But.. Perhaps you could add a something of the form "IE=Latest" for sites that are well built in the first place. So the site wouldn't be tied into IE8 Thanks, Ed
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
It's great that IE 8 will have a much better standards support. It's bad that it won't be on by default, requiring a switch. At least the syntax proposed for the switch won't send validators in for a loop, and actually appear in the DOM. Still, it's bad that this mode isn't on by default - frankly, you should make at least (X)HTML Strict use it too, and display a visible notification that IE8 runs in IE7 mode (or lower) on all others. It would be sensible too, as those Strict modes are the basis for forthcoming HTML 5 - while Transitional and Frameset won't be compatible with HTML 5. Why? Simply put, on all the websites I've found, those that got generated with tools usually use Transitional (or at least Frameset) as a Doctype. Those that use Strict are not very common. For the odd one out using a Strict doctype with non-standard/hacked code, a UI toggle should be made available. Don't break the Web - Strict mode was always supposed to lead the way towards new HTML versions. Use it as such.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Harmonizing rendering results by further diversifying rendering options? Ouch... sorry, no enthusiasm here... > I’m excited by all the standards work > we’re doing in IE8; Well, due to my opinion many of our everyday life problems developing solutions for homogenous rendering results are caused by diversifications like the one you call your "approach". I would call your "approach" simply "another monopolists unique selling point idea". It would help "us software- and webdevelopers" much, much, much further if Microsoft could finally stop further "exciting standards work" that simply mean further diversifications which won't change anything but increase work, time and costs for Microsofts IE-competitors. Why can't Microsoft just implement a non-Microsoft standard "as it is specified", stop "fault-tolerant" standard-implementations which's side effects allow developers to use non-standard conform side-effects which further diversify rendering problems? Is it too difficult for you? Microsoft caused many of the "compatibility problems" itself, by undermining standards with so called "extensions" (like your "great exciting approach"), which are nothing more but "a monopolist's approach to generate further unique selling points". I'm a computer-kid, started coding with 8 years of age, programming for over 27 years now, and anything I can tell you about your "exciting standards work" is: learn implementing standards "as they are defined", stop undermining standards and "diverifying solutions" for problems you caused yourself. That would help us MOST.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
@Ted: there is another least bad option for Microsoft: reassign the IE team to some more useful product, and get rid of IE for good. Just let it die.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I understand the importance about backward compatibility. However, a solution that relies on all web site developers to put an IE8 specific meta tag on their pages isn't credible. It will just result in IE8's super standard compliant mode not being used since no-one will bother with those tags. A web site is standard when it conforms to the standard, not when it conforms to the standard and adds an IE8 specific meta tag. The suggestion above about changing the way IE8 identifies itself is very good IMHO. Combine that with an option for a user to add a broken website to the IE6-compatible-sites list (so that IE8 identifies as IE6 the next time it goes there) and you're done.
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
This is foolish. We already have conditional comments to sort the lack of adherence to standards -that Microsoft help create- for existign versions of IE. IE8 MUST be fully standards compliant and NOTHING more. If you guys keep looking back at your past mistakes there will be no future for the web. Look forward, not backward!
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
Is so difficult to be Standard Compliant and nothing more????
Anonymous
January 22, 2008
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Anonymous
January 22, 2008
I agree that this isn't particularly a good idea. It would be nice if IE8 started with a clean slate. Personally I would bump this onto the user. Attempt to render the page using your new IE8 engine (IF and ONLY IF the page has a Strict doctype). If it detects ANY errors/warnings in the markup then display a message to the user saying something like "This page may not be rendered correctly, do you want to try rendering it in compatibility mode?". Then it's just a case of them clicking Yes or No. It's the only way that you'll be able to break free from the chain of backward compat. Yes it will be annoying for the first couple months whilst web sites update their sites to fix bugs or whatever. But at least in the time being the users of IE8 will have an easy to reach, single mouse click, way to still view the web page. You could add the site to an internal list of domains as well. So if they visit the site the next day then it won't ask them again. But you could make it remove the sites from this list every 14 days or something so that periodically the browser would "retry" to render it using the IE8 engine. I don't know - but I'm CERTAIN there must be some user-oriented way this can be solved.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
This is a genius idea. All the nay-sayers need to think again about what the implications actually are. This means I can include a tag like the following: <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="FF=3" /> and IE will be able to switch into Firefox 3 rendering mode... Right...? Guys..?
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
The idea is good. The default is bad. IE8 should default to rendering in it's best mode. If I have a site that breaks in it, then there are two options:

The site's owner adds the meta tag to set it to IE6 mode.
I have a compatibilty dialog in IE8 that works like the one in Explorer's File->Properties where I can override IE8 and tell it to use IE6 for this site. (i.e. same solution as trying to run Win98 stuff in WinXP) Regards, Rob...

Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Let me add my support to switching on "super duper" standards mode when users have served XHTML Strict with application/xhtml+xml. It's future-compatible and over time will encourage web coders to move to standards compliant code without breaking the existing stuff.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
The web will not break when IE8 is released!! Sites which were designed to work with IE6 (only) will still work with IE6 only, there is no problem whatsoever. Sites which were designed to standards will work with IE8, but not IE6. The obvious solution is to give companies an IE6 browser for the intranet and IE8 for the internet. Most companies are not upgrading to Vista because it does not provide IE6. You are just creating a bigger mess for future generations. Standards are designed to be forwards and backwards compatible, they may render slightly differently but they can be updated in the future if really necessary. It is not the same as the Word document situation where you need the app in order to open the document. In the case of HTML we can open any version in a simple text editor so the content is never lost, just some formatting.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
@Gareth Adams: NO this is what many people get wrong. It's just stated in the article that other browser vendors COULD add support for their own browsers to have a similar 'render engine switch' using the same tag. It will NOT make IE8 use the FF3 render engine ;)
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Add my vote to it should be: 1. “Quirks mode” remains the same, and compatible with current content. 2. “Standards mode” remains the same as IE7, if a simple <meta> tag is added. 3. If you (the page developer) want standards mode use the correct doctype. Then people with incorrect webpages can use the meta tag to state that which should be simple enough to do. And people without the meta tag can expect that a doctype will get standards compliant webpages.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Sorry to publish twice, but if we must abandon progressive enhancement, at least let authors specify the technology they use, rather than the browser versions. I get the argument about different browsers having different support for different parts of the one standard, but I much prefer a meta tag like: <meta name="UA-TechRequirements" content="CSS=2.1;XHTML=1.0 Strict;AJAX=1.0;" />
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
I understand the need for a rendering switch. I prefer that the switch be a cultural version instead of a product version. I wrote up an alternative switch, X-Web-Epoch, here: http://tagneto.blogspot.com/2008/01/x-web-epoch-instead-of-x-ua-compatible.html
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Just make world a better place and drop IE.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
FYI I'm the maintainer of about a dozen of small-to-big-sized websites (almost all of them standard-compliant) and I will never use this tag in any of my websites, not matter of how this affects IE8 compatibility. Pseudo-comments are bad enough, but this is too much.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
2 cents. 1.) @ John A. Bilicki III - How can you be the only one that thinks this is a good idea? have you not read everyone else's post? + I am a designer, and a developer (doing PHP,JSP,ASP,Rails,etc. requires you to know, and do both)... and since JavaScript is on the client side, almost every designer these days needs to dabble with developer stuff. 2.) Am I the only one that finds the term "super standards mode" to be a bit ironic? We haven't heard what IE8 will fix in the CSS or the JS or the HTML or the DOM. I think it should be refered to as "closer to standards mode" or something much more realistic. gord
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Standards Mode by Default. Standards Mode by Default. Standards Mode by Default. And now repeat!
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
If the reason for this is not being able to trust DOCTYPE when pages are generated by non-standards applications, and you're happy to go looking around in meta tags, why not do something like this instead: If got a good DOCTYPE but also a <meta name="generator"> tag, for example: <meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0"> <META NAME="GENERATOR" Content="Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0"> then render as IE7, otherwise use IE8 standards. That way the sites generated automatically with software won't break in IE8 but the tags can be removed to switch to IE8 standards.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Also, if you say that IE gets fed an alternative web page, why not just change the User-Agent string to copy Firefox's, so that you get this better page, and add a new Header, such as "Browser: Internet Explorer 8" to IE's HTTP request? Sure, it may give the impression that Firefox suddenly gains a huge usage %, but, bigger picture and all that :) Stat gathering sites (like Google Analytics) then only need to look for this new header to balance it out.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
So if I understand it correctly any site that doesn't use the IE specific tag will be forever rendered in IE7 mode even while you launch for instance IE9?
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
I too think that this is a great idea, but the default behavior is evil. You're not going to make friends with the standards community that way. It makes no sense: If I test my site with IE8 and want to tell IE that I did so and that I do not want it to "improve" my site in later versions, this absolutely should be opt-in. Providing this function via HTTP-headers even means that I don't have to touch the HTML or apps in my site, I can just configure my web server that way. So it's easy even if I add it as an afterthought. But if I code my HTML to be standars compliant, I just want all browsers to act as if it were. Who says that everyone does detailed tests with IE and that rendering/compliance improvements would not actually improve sites? It's not too late. Please change this.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Watch out for IE9 - new standards tags, new quirks mode and the same behaviour. I think its time to assume the responsibility and say - ok, there were errors, its time to move on - make a good browser, rename it and release it, but don't adapt the web for your needs - cause it looks weird.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Sorry - I just plain refuse to do this. That tag will not enter any of my code. If the IE team can't program to standards that is their issue, not mine. I program to standards not browsers.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
@siegfried: The very nature of being 'backwards compatible' means that you have to do it in such a way that it won't require the old version to change at all. Consider HTML files that are shipped as part of embedded resources in applications or company websites that were set up by an outside contractor, where changes can only be made at cost to the site owner. In both cases, making updates purely for compatibilty is expensive and unlikely to happen. What's worse, is that if IE8 breaks too many sites, people won't upgrade and web developers will not have the choice to serve compliant code because there simply aren't going to be enough people out there using a browser that could handle it. It's all well and good sitting in an ivory tower and looking at the way things would be done if all the world was perfect, but occasionally you do just have to step down, accept the fact that things aren't perfect and just take a more pragmatic view of the world. The easiest pages to change are those that have not yet been written and that's exactly the ones the opt-in switch is aiming for.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Let me get this straight: in order to build a standards compliant website that renders well in IE8, I will have to use non-standard Microsoftisms, one way or the other. Right. Microsoft: breaking the web one tag at a time.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Well, this idea is not that stupid... Still, I think this is the wrong way to do it. Create a meta only for IE8 is a bad thing, I agree your should just think about standards... Well, here is my idea. Well, most websites use a favicon.ico on their root folder. This is a convenient way to customize its website icon. Maybe you could check a file, which could be named "IE8render.ini" or something like this. This file could mean that IE8 has to use its "Super Standard", well in fact "normal" mode. IE8 could check this file one time per session, and configure itself to use the Super Standard mode. ... Change this meta for a small and little file, uploaded once and for all on the webserver. It could be ok for everybody, huh? What about it? What do you think about it?! Personnaly, I think it could be just great, both for IE team and for developpers.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Dear Microsoft, I believe that using a Meta-tag to Opt-In is a terrible idea. You can't rewrite the rules of HTML. DOCTYPEs are the proper way to do this. And, I respectfully show my disapproval of the situation with the following conditional comment:  :)
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
@Flavien, I don't mean to be rude, but that's a terrible idea. The issue at hand is that we have to opt-in beyond the normal DOCTYPE that every other browser under the sun uses to opt-in to standards mode. Your solution is merely another pointless opt-in method.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Ok ok, sorry if my idea was that bad... lol ;)
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
You are simply incompetents Stop doing odd jobs BE STANDARD NOW "Don't break the web" is a sign of odd job because YOU BREAK THE WEB some years ago Now is time to repair it I hate you with all my energy and I hope you'll pay for your ineptitude
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
@cwilso: You say the min. version supported will be IE7; IE7 is pretty good with regards to standards. What changes are there between IE7 and IE8 that will cause websites to render differently. I'm trying to get an idea of the degree of the breakage. Thanks. Ciao!
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Constantly striving for backwards compatibility here is not a goal for anyone as it does not serve anyone well over time. I suspect that since the engine is used in things like Quicken, that that is the source of the issue, not websites. In such a case have IE8 use the better standards support, and the embeddable module require the meta tag. In fact, if everyone out there which you are worried about breaking just added a <meta compatibility="IE7">, we would all be better off.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
It's fine and dandy to think about the intranets made for IE6 when considering this only when it's known how many of those intranets would actually have a proper doctype and trigger standards mode in IE8 should IE8 be made to work like all the other browsers. If the intranet is made up of enough garbage code that it requires IE6 I'd feel safe in putting my money on it probably not having a doctype, or at least not an xhtml (any) or a html strict one. If I've already said I want to use the standards compliant rendering mode I expect EVERY BROWSER CAPABLE to render my site using it's standards mode WITHOUT ADDITIONAL CODE. With version 8 IE is finally becoming capable, but now you're telling me only if I include additional code. This is wrong, we are sick of this, I'm not going to do ANYTHING more for IE, it will forever remain locked back with IE7 in the stone age unless you fix it. Yes, I'm going to willfully give IE users a lower quality experience than everyone else and let them know that they could be seeing more with a real browser. I'm done with writing my site multiple times for each form of your browser and am not interested in having to add in a new tag now so that your one browser that supposedly works knows it's supposed to start working. You want developers and designers to make compliant sites that IE8 handles right then make IE naturally handle them right, don't expect us to pick up the slack you leave behind no matter how little of it there is. As a side note, I find the one prior comment about it not being possible to be a developer and a designer interesting. I wasn't aware that my skill sets were mutually exclusive, especially not when I was learning them both. Rather easy to learn back end / database stuff and front end things, perhaps you just went to the wrong school? My particular school had a nice track set up, starting with basic programming (VB, C++), then moving onto everything front end (JavaScript HTML and CSS), then back end (PHP, ColdFusion, ASP.net), and finished with several classes to make sure everything was known and that we could use the right tool for each task. No using JS for form checking when end users aren't supposed to be able to see what happens and all that fun stuff. Given enough basics and training to be able to pick up a book or two on anything and then use it correctly given enough time to read the books, regardless of it being front end design or back end development.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
What may not be clear from this IEBlog post is that if you code to HTML5 standard (using the HTML5 DOCTYPE) you do not need the meta tag. IE8 will automatically go into "super standards" mode if you code your websites in HTML5. This has been confirmed by Chris here: http://blogs.msdn.com/cwilso/archive/2008/01/22/i-feel-happy-too.aspx#7203075
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
@Jeff Schiller - Which parts of the draft html 5 spec does Internet Explorer 8 support? Canvas and SVG support would seem mandatory and the extra input types look very useful. Are you as committed to HTML 5 as you are to CSS2?
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
@Feh, I'm done with this " I wasn't aware that my skill sets were mutually exclusive, especially not when I was learning them both. Rather easy to learn back end / database stuff and front end things, perhaps you just went to the wrong school?" If you think you're good at both, you probably can't do either well.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Knowing MS, HTML5 support in IE8 would be a version 1.0 IE6 type of thing. You'll have to wait 5 years just like IE7 to get some bugs fixed and another 2 years before you can opt-in with a new version that might be standards compliant, but most likely not. Can't expect much from the lazy IE team either, you're better off avoiding the mess of multiple render engines in IE.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Ed Everett: Read the linked post. Your "idea" is called IE=Edge. Dirk: Even the pirates get IE7 now. WGA is off. hmm: Yes, they do. Which is why they have comparatively puny marketshare despite being cross-platform and offering better standards support.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
@Jeff Schiller: Right... So now we have to code to a standard that's not even done yet? Good choice! More new flaws to find!
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
@billybob: I do not work for Microsoft, so I have no more information than is given in the IEBlog or on Chris' personal blog. FYI, SVG is not part of HTML5 (though Canvas is). @SchizoDuckie: Right. One thing that might be some consolation is that HTML5 is supposed to be backward compatible with HTML4.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
We're in 2008 for christs sake, and you opt to add another layer of browser sniffing to the web? Seriously? A technology from the same era as spacer gifs and table layouts? Embrace... ...extend... ...extinguish. I guess I shouldn't be shocked, but I really am. Shocked and disappointed.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Also, by the "we" in my last post I'm referring to the 4 people who managed to graduate from the program I took while I was taking it. Yeah, not many people make it cause it is hard and a lot of work, but the ability to fit into basically any web based job after graduation is quite nice.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Great. For me, next step is make javascript more compatible with w3c HTMLElement classes and prototype DOM classes.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Why does the IE team hate web developers? Thanks for announcing another 3-4 years of suffering. I can only hope you are all fired or transferred before IE9.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Reading through all the comments, obviously there is a significant amount of developer hostility to Microsoft's plans for IE8. This one hopes that MS realizes their commitment to developers (do the Ballmer dance!) not only includes developers of OS applications, but developers of internet applications as well, and nixes this plan before it is implemented. It's a shame, really, that "Do The Right Thing" has always come a distant second to "What's Right For Us" up to now. Make no mistake, I am sure the programmers who spent so much time making sure IE8 passed Acid2 are just as incensed about the decision to short circuit their success, but don't hold your breath waiting to hear from them. ... at least under their real names.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
That's way too many comments to check if this is already posted, so forgive me. What you're saying is that IE8 will require a non-standard tag in order for the browser to go by the standards? Wow, irony people... IE has been a pain because I can't code to standards and expect it to work... I have to code to standards, then fix IE6, IE7, IE5.5, etc. Make it standards compliant WITHOUT having fancy switches. If you really MUST have it backward compatible, make THAT the flag. Force developers to choose the old rendering style instead of forcing everyone who cares about their site going by standards to use a proprietary (aka NON-STANDARD) flag. Or don't put it in at all. Push web standards ahead and make everyone's life easier in the end.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Drew is absolutely right! And why not ship a "flagging tool" together with IE8 that throws in this extra meta tag into all html pages in some directory and its subdirectories, if it is necessary? The web developer could simply check if it works, and if not, start the flagging tool.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
@Chris Wilson (cwilso): Thanks for taking the time to respond to this assault of responses and negativity. I have one last suggestion and I hope you are still reading: Why not make it work like the Phishing filter?

Intranet sites default to IE6/IE7 rendering to accommodate the millions of internal businesses apps which may break
Internet sites default to the super standards mode
Knowledgeable users can report sites as rendering incorrectly (switches the renderer in use)
Web service automatically adjusts rendering settings for average Joe users Additionally, you could try to seed the web service with data gathered from automated analysis of Microsoft Live Search's web cache. Thoughts?

Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Dear Microsoft IE team: Nobody wants this. What are you thinking?
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
The Phishing filter thingy is a nice idea but would throw in significant delay before the page is actually shown.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
My recommendation is to do the opposite of what you have described. If the page has a correct DOCTYPE, use the strictest current implementation of standards rendering that you can. If the page does not have a correct DOCTYPE, render in "quirks" mode. Finally, add a META tag that allows the web developer to state explicitly if they want to target the exact rendering functionality of a specific brand of the dialer. This way you'll satisfy all parties. You'll have fully standard rendering by default which will satisfy the ACID2 test properly and you'll have quirks mode for really old and probably unmaintained pages. For the people screaming to have IE8 continue to render like IE7 or IE6, they can make a single modification to the pages of their site to request that IE8 continue to render in partially quirky mode by asking for a specific rendering target.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Childish solution: <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=3" /> Grownup solution: <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="all=edge" /> But the best solution would to not use the meta element at all.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY AND GOOD in the world JUST MAKE IT FULLY STANDARDS COMPLIANT and FORCE SITES TO UPGRADE. You have SO much power and vastly overestimate the impact of a change in page rendering. Sites for which layout and design is important will easily and gladly upgrade to be fully compliant with a new spec. You mention Firefox, and that's an excellent example -- Firefox now works great for almost 100% of sites on the web and is fully standards compliant. There is NO REASON IE CANNOT BE THE SAME, and if you think otherwise you're DELUDING yourselves. Seriously. You have NO RIGHT TO CONTINUE YOUR SEGMENTATION OF THE WEB. STOP IT!! I apologize for yelling, but in circumstances like this it is necessary to be heard well.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Lol, its patetic. MS can't develop a standards-friendly browser.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
"1. “Quirks mode” remains the same, and compatible with current content.

“Standards mode” remains the same as IE7, and compatible with current content.
If you (the page developer) really want the best standards support IE8 can give, you can get it by inserting a simple <meta> element. Aaron gives more details on this in his article." I think this needs to be dependent on Doctype. If you claim that this is not to break old websites then do not force the bandaid on doctypes that are in all likeliness built for standards, or with that intention. There's a difference between a 2 years old active ecom site and a 12 years old informational document that has no chance of seeing an update.

Anonymous
January 23, 2008
BAD MICROSOFT NO BISCUIT for once in your life stand on principle instead of capitulating to the lowing herd.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
So much as has already been said on the topic that I hesitate to contribute. However, I must put in my agreement with most of the comments I've read, if not always in the way the commenters represent themselves with foul language and shouting. I understand the concern with already published content on CD/DVD, however those media can be some of the least expensive to reproduce and if they are developing for IE6, then they truly need a kick in the pants. There's no excuse for that. Many of the comments bring to light the idea of specifying a <meta> value to maintain IE6 compatibility. This is as it should be. Standards should certainly be default, not an opt-in. I'm sure you and many others here can appreciate the number of times in any given month I find myself cursing IE under my breath or aloud. IE7 was a step in the right direction. One which has already provided developers to better themselves and the web by coding closer to standards. Anyone who truly cares about how their website looks will already have a site which fits closer to standards anyway. Give them an additional shove and make IE8 work with standards by default.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Som så många redan har beskrivit, kom det ut ett nytt nummer av AListApart i början av veckan - ett nummer där man beskrev ett förslag på en lösning på det problemet som kommer att uppkomma när fler och...
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Why can't you just use the same doctype switching we have used for the last 8 years. Mozilla has already extended it and introduced 'Almost Standards' and 'Full standards' mode back in Firefox 1.0.1: http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Mozilla%27s_DOCTYPE_sniffing This should be extended so (x)Html5 also triggers 'Full standards' mode (aka ie8 mode): http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/ http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
@feh Hit a nerve over something? You -did- say it was "Rather easy" to learn, so your spouting of amount of classwork and GPA really doesn't mean anything.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
"It turned out by the time IE7 shipped in late 2006, roughly half of the top 200 US web sites were in 'standards mode'. Many of those sites had been 'opted in' to standards mode by a tool that generated their content;" And what will happen in the future, when tools insert this this meta tag just like they insert valid doctypes now, suppose that you release IE8, then a new CSS 3.5 specification is released, of course IE8 does not handle this specification because it was released after IE8, what will happen?, you will release IE9 with a new engine with "super, extra, master, this time is for real" standards mode that is activated clapping twice?, I can't believe it.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Why would I want to add a flag to tell IE that I am standard compliant ? Just assume your past Microsoft. If I code to the standard, respect it. By default. And for people that coded for IE only, well that their problems. Assume yourselves.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
oh boy. This comes as no surprise but nonetheless the approach is really really ugly. If you do implement this, then please do at least allow an additional way to browser-independently trigger whatever best standards mode is available. Like so: <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content=""> The idea would be that there ist a trigger value that will at least cause IE best standards mode for IE and that does NOT have to specifically target the IE family of browsers at all. If you support the use of the generic value '' without a browser name, then at least a sane web developer could tell all browsers equally, that every browser should try their best. Otherwise, I am pretty tempted to not use your switch at all and keep all IE users trapped in second-class IE7-land. And I am quite sure that I am not the only web developer who feels like this. Stop deliverately splitting the web. At least, please allow people who know what they're doing to declare an opt-in into sanity in a browser-independent manner.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
You HAVE TO BREAK IT, so we can ALL MOVE FORWARD!!!
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Why don't you just make it render properly for all users? Older sites which assume the legacy rendering, guess what? They're broken! It's the site developers' responsibility to fix this, not the browser's. All the browser is supposed to do is render things according to the standards.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
What is going wrong in the heads of the developpers @MS? BREAK it, dont care IE is a nightmare for us!!
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Fellas, I really appreciate what you're trying to do. Improving the renderer was the right thing to do, and you've done that. Bravo! The wrong thing to do is to have the correct behaviour require yet another tag. For sites that are affected because of past missteps, require THOSE sites to append the extra tag in IE8. Choose one that will be ignored in IE7 and earlier. This way you've given those who correctly follow the standards the correct behaviour AS THE DEFAULT. (Chris, if you've ever overheard a support call, you know exactly how many people change the defaults on ANY of their software.) Furthermore, you've given those people that demand the old, broken behaviour a quick and easy out. They won't have to undergo the arduous task of re-doing an entire site, just placing meta tags on all their pages (which is what you are proposing the rest of the already standards complying web do instead). Don't reward the behaviour of the broken sites by keeping to old renderer as the default, or you will face the SAME problem when you roll out IE9. That way, you are not punishing all the MANY MANY other sites that will already render correctly ('half of the top 200 US web sites were in “standards mode”') Chris Wilson, please take this under consideration. Adam Kelly
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
I agree with all the sane commenters here the default when processing a correctly specified doctype should be standards mode if developers want it rendered incorrectly {ie7 mode} then let them add the meta tag to specify that. we should not have to add a tag to our standards compliant websites to allow the ie8 users to see it the way it was written. Just because some other lazy developers are writing pages that rely on the weirdness of ie7 and choosing to doctype their pages as standard when this is not the case.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
I code to published standards. If you want to render them correctly, implement the standards. If you don't, don't. I couldn't possibly care less when I can easily tell my customers "Download Firefox or Opera, they actually work. Call the clowns you got your browser from and tell them to fix it". I do it already and they all thank me for it.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Adam, I think Chris is saying that half of the top 200 US websites are triggering standards mode when only some of them really should be. But even still, I think that shouldn't Microsoft's shouldn't be worrying about breaking these old-school websites. That's what a Beta release is for. So people can test their websites ahead of time and make it right. C'mon Microsoft! Nobody seriously believes that your Meta tag is a good idea.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Dear Microsoft, I think after years of doing just about everything WRONG when it comes to browser implementation, JUST ONCE you might want to TRY GOING AGAINST YOUR INSTINCTS!! Seriously.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
I have to agree that full standards compliant mode should be on by default. The meta tag is a good Idea but it should be used more as a quick fix. That is when my page breaks on a new version all I need to do for a quick fix is add the meta tag to each page, or set it on the server and the site works. Then I have all the time in the world to remove any code which relies on non-standard behaviour
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Just a small reminder to some of the commenters: The problem we are discussing here is not the buggy standards interpretation of IE5, 6 and 7. It does not make any sense to offer an update for these browsers. The IE 8 should be that update. The problem this discussion is about are those much too many web pages out in the wild that rely on these IE bugs. And BTW, another aspect: The main problem are not those intranet sites. If any company wants or has to stick to their buggy pages then this company is without any problem able to enforce the usage of the old IE for the intranet. As far as i remmber something like that was already posted as comment here. The main problem are thousands of private and small business pages which will break in IE 8 if rendered in standards compliant mode.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
@Konrad, I have to assume that you mean that the meta tag would only be a good idea if you wanted to OPT-OUT of standards mode. Assuming that Standards Mode would be on by default. Yes? Otherwise, you don't make any sense.

It just surprises me that Microsoft would take ownership of every buggy page around the Internet that happens to look OK on old versions of IE. As if all the bad web pages of the world were designed by a rogue Internet Explorer HTML generator of some kind. The fact of the matter is that the HTML generators that mistakenly put the DOCTYPEs into the markup are the problems. Microsoft needs to correctly place the blame onto the software makers who made this error. My sense is that executives above Chris Wilson are forcing him to take this nonsensical meta-tag approach to avoid a PR nightmare. But, I think that a PR issue can easily be avoided by clearly explaining that many HTML generators were at fault. Put out a press release spinning the story as a major leap forward for IE. If you take that approach, IE8 comes out looking like a triumphant hero.

Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Ship a new product, Internet Expander 1.0, or whatever, as a replacement for IE6/7. Sort of like Firefox 1.0 vs Netscape Naviagtor 4. A "new" product won't need the "don't break the web" assumption. And the old IE6/7 can still be installed, lurking there for those that need to use it.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1201080691&count=1 Good read. Ian Hixie is one of the authors of Acid2 by the way. "It will be interesting to see whether IE8 really supports Acid2, since that test page doesn't include any of the special magic words being proposed here. Will they hard-code the URI? Will they check every page against a fingerprint and if it matches the fingerprint of the Acid2 page, trigger the IE8 quirks mode instead of the IE7 quirks mode?" Wonder if we can add word liar to describe the IE team's claims?
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
LEAVE OUT THE META TAG PLEASE!!!! IT'S POINLESS AND YOU'RE BREAKING THINGS AGAIN!!!! Just let it render as should be in XHTML Transitional/Strict. Let pages with no doctype render in ie6 or 7 mode. Don't break the web again!!! NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!! Let the web be as it should be!!!!
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
I understand you. But I'm not with you. As a web developer I won't use the meta tag. I'm targeting standards, not browsers. I'm sorry. And I'll let everybody know it's not my code's fault. Sorry. I'm not spending more time dealing with your problems. If you don't want to pay for your past errors, then I'm not going to fix things for you. Alas, nothing really assures me that IE8 will have a decent standards compliance...
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
I see what the problem is for MS/IE, but I think that the chosen solution is just not right. Therefore I propose an alteration of the way the version switch will be implemented. As this is the home of the IE team I'll repost what I just posted on Meyerweb.com: Setting the IE7 rendering to be the default rendering now will make it to be the default forever (well untill MS comes up with yet another 'fix'). IE22 will still have to render pages as if it was IE7 if no switch is included that tells it to do otherwise. If it does not then the web will still be broken. Therefore the default behavior should be changed to "latest" as you (Eric Meyer) stated. And the switch (if any) should be inserted in pages that will break, because that's where the fixing needs to be done. That way not all pages will be rescued from breaking as not all will be updated with this switch. Therefore MS could include a classic mode in its browser, say the IE7 engine, and let users switch in cases where the old pages are not updated with a switch. That way:
MS only has to maintain only two engine versions instead of all from IE6 and up: the current/latest and IE7/classic.
MS does not have to fork a new browser (in a way this is a fork, but it doesn't look like it) which would be like admitting that their product was bad
This "break the web" issue will stop showing up each and every time MS releases a new version of IE and no future fix will ever be necessary to set a new (non-IE7) baseline
The proprietary switch will only be inserted into pages that are already stuffed with proprietary, non standards code and probably by the developers who delivered this code themselves (let them pay for their own deeds)
IE-only pages that are not updated will still be accessible in IE as the user can switch the engine if necessary (of course these pages should be remembered)
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
In reference to my earlier suggestion for a new product, why not "Internet Vista"?
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Or "Internet Explorer Live 1.0", IE7's successor...
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Hi May be i'm missing something here, but is there going to be any clear and definitive answer about xhtml support? Bye
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Skip the IE 8 version, implement XHTML, the complete HTML 4 and CSS 2, a lot of HTML 5 and CSS 3 and call us again in 2011.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
@Vance Ignorance is bliss huh? Maybe you should spend more than a cursory glance at the history of browser standards instead regurgitating the usual myths. The level of ignorance displayed by 'developers' posting comments makes me ashamed to be one. It's just a fricking META tag, what is the big deal? If you don't have a sensible alternative, don't make yourself look stupid. Mind you, stupity drives the angry mob...
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Worst "Web Standards" Trigger EVA! =================================== http://www.thesimpsonsquotes.com/images/comicguypoint.gif
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
@Al So Al, in your mighty wisdom; can you suggest a solution better than the META tag?
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Will, Let's think about this just a teensy weensy bit. If MS were to switch to the new rendering engine (i'm assuming it's new) by default, millions of web sites would break. Now if you hate MS, well then hurrah. The economic effect to business worldwide would be .. big. And noisy.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
This is great. This makes me even more determined to spread the IE(7) love. Hope you guys make IE8 really outstanding.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
@amazed "It's just a fricking META tag, what is the big deal?" It's not so much the meta tag, the big deal is the implementation of the switch, making IE7 mode the default. The current release of the visiting IE should be the default. "Let's think about this just a teensy weensy bit." Let's do so. As you already seem to have done just that maybe you could read my previous post in the mean time. "If MS were to switch to the new rendering engine (i'm assuming it's new) by default, millions of web sites would break. Now if you hate MS, well then hurrah. The economic effect to business worldwide would be .. big. And noisy." The answer to al that noise would be MS saying: "listen, we came up with a very simple solution... just add this tiny little meta tag in the header of your broken files and everything will be just fine". And that would be the end of the "broken web" problem. Even when new IE version are released. With the IE7 default the broken part will never be fixed, but the correct part will have to prove till the end of times that they are not broken. Guilty untill proven innocent so to speak.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
@Al Back to you Al, what is non-standard about a META tag?
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
@Gary, You solution does not solve anything. Every browser vendor has backwards compatibility problems. The seriousness of the bc problem(how many users it effects, does it break pages), drives the requirement for a web-page browser manufacturer / version directive.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Web Standards: The Ideal And The Reality
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
@Sander, "The answer to al that noise would be MS saying: "listen, we came up with a very simple solution... just add this tiny little meta tag in the header of your broken files and everything will be just fine". Adding a "simple meta tag" may be simple to you, but for the majority of businesses it is not; it costs them money and their sites will be broken - damaged business - irate customers - until they do. They will not be thanking MS for this.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
@amazed: millions of web sites around the world are not going to break in a standards compliant browser with a simple quirks mode if no DOCTYPE is specified. And Microsoft blaming this on CSS is a lie. The biggest issues abound in ActiveX and JScript. Business will not suffer, nothing is going to explode. This "don't break the internet" mantra is largely untrue and is just being used as an excuse. Millions and millions of people today use Safari, Firefox and Opera and have absolutely no issues browsing the web. The one area where issues would arise are on large intranets with custom web apps designed specifically for IE6. In those cases, a stand-alone version of IE6 could be provided, or an option to switch IE8 to use IE6's rendering engine. The rest of the web will not have any issues. At worst, some very old web sites that for some reason provide a DOCTYPE but are badly broken except under IE6 might not look entirely correct, but the content will still be completely available. Anything more advanced that today resembles something closer to Web 2.0 is already going to be largely standards compliant with exceptions built-in to handle IE. However, this meta tag and targeting specific rendering versions is going to cause massive headaches and issues in a number areas, not to mention we're still completely in the dark as to what it effects (just CSS? CSS and Javascript?...). If Microsoft really wanted to break away from all the problems it caused with IE6's stagnation, it would use a new user-agent code in IE8 and ignore the IE conditional comments like any other browser, as well as default to an actual standards mode based on W3C specifications and DOCTYPE, and continue to update and improve upon that engine. For the businesses that really do need IE6 or to view old web pages, a meta tag could be added to force IE8 to render the page like IE6/7, or the user could specifically change IE8 to use an older engine if adding the meta tag wasn't possible. Compliant sites all over the web would work in IE8 just like they would in Safari or Firefox or Opera, and the few exceptions where IE6/7 would be needed, they could be used.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
It's unfortunate, but I think a lot of aggravation would have been avoided if the original blog entry had mentioned both the regkey and the future doctype switching as you mentioned in http://blogs.msdn.com/cwilso/archive/2008/01/22/i-feel-happy-too.aspx#7203075. Slashdot, Digg, and people here are going jumping mad when they really have just about anything they could ever want.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
@amazed "Adding a "simple meta tag" may be simple to you, but for the majority of businesses it is not; it costs them money and their sites will be broken - damaged business - irate customers - until they do. They will not be thanking MS for this." The costs of such a thing will be very little. The problem with currently proposed behaviour is that it does NOT fix the broken web (it already is broken!). It only makes shure we will not be bothered too much by it this time. But problems with it will certainly return. Adding the switch to the broken pages will fix them. That's what we want: fix the broken part of the web. And if all it takes is adding a meta tag to these pages then we should do it. It will be much much cheaper than being stuck with this problem that keeps coming up. Being stuck with a IE that even in 10 years time still has to incorporate al its previous render engines back to IE7. Being stuck to a tag that is added to new and correct pages in order fix old and broken pages.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
@德瑞 The majority of websites output different code (using a variety of methods) for different browsers. Websites do stuff differently for IE, so they will break. "Millions and millions of people today use Safari, Firefox and Opera and have absolutely no issues browsing the web." Really? My internet banking does not work with Opera, for example.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
@amazed: Yes, web sites treat IE differently, that's why IE8 should adopt a new id so that web sites don't treat it like IE. For the few web sites that wouldn't be usable in a standards compliant browser, provide a stand-alone version of IE6/7. I'm sure your bank would be standards compliant relatively quickly if IE8 was going to also be standards compliant.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
This is nonsense, like nearly everyone is saying, change IE's signature and let the developers that fail to comply with every other standards browser on earth fix their own problems. If a developer chooses to develop their site in such a way that it only works on IE then it's not worth much to begin with, after all a huge percentage of users now use Non-IE browsers. we are all tired of writing something for standards browsers and turning around only to find that the page is horribly misshapen on IE and having to make huge revisions just to accommodate it. Sure we will still have to make some changes for IE7 or IE6 while people still use it, but that doesn't mean we can't look forward to a better day when IE8 has replaced them.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008

For "Internet" and "Trusted sites" zone, do IE8 standards mode the default.
For Intranet and Local Computer, keep old mode.
Please ship a tool that automatically batch adds the tag to non-standards sites/pages.
Please make IE8 at least on Windows 2000, if not 9x. If you don't set IE8 standards mode as the default, mainstream sites today which STILL REFUSE to render properly in Opera and which work only in Firefox and IE will continue to do so. Please stop doing injustice to Opera.

Anonymous
January 23, 2008
just want to ask: have ever tried to be standards compliant? What you program to do with IE8 is for me useless till your browsers are not able to render in a correct manner all, ALL, the CSS rules, just like all the other browsers do. I'm sure you know how many hours web designers and developers throw away to get a good result on IE.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
This is wrong on so many levels. However, when you think about it, it's not such a big deal. So what if your compliant websites do not render properly in IE. I do not personally know a single person anymore who uses IE as their main browser. I refuse to work around IE-specific bugs. If someone can not view my sites and complains to me, I'll happily recommend Firefox or Opera. I'll also recommend providing feedback to Microsoft. Microsoft, you're killing own market.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Super-standard mode? how nice. Will IE8-SP1 have an Hyper-standard mode that we can enable with a different set of meta tags?
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
what about this? http://youtube.com/watch?v=drLO_LG0W9w
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
will wait release date. wish that will be soon!
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Aaron Gustafson on A List Apart said the meta element will be described by browser versioning: http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8;FF=3;OtherUA=4" History tells us when browsers were released. History is referenced by date. Therefore the meta element should be described by date: http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="2008-01-24" Which is easy to implement both by vendor, developer and tester. Plus, there are others thinking this as well: http://alistapart.com/comments/beyonddoctype?page=3#23
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
What when HTML5 is released? Will this "let's fork the web with every version of IE" madness continue? Or will the IE team make the effort to get HTML5 right from day one? Leave all the "dont break the web" nonsense in the HTML4 world, and simply render HTML5 the way the standards say from day one? If so, that could be this idea's one saving grace. It won't be forever. If there is no quirks mode, no semi-standards mode, no IE8 mode, no IE8.1 mode, no slightly-more-strict mode, no nonstandard meta tags, no creative use of DOCTYPES in html5 content, I can live with this. Then we have one single, sane, (and sanctioned by W3C) way to get standards-compliant rendering. Simply advertise our content as HTML5 instead of (X)HTML 4.x. If you promise to do that, I'll shut up about how terrible this idea is. More than anything, I just want to see an end to this. I'm sick of the onus being on us, the web developers who care about standards, to do the extra work, instead of where it belongs, with the browser vendor who, quite simply, should treat correct content correctly, even if it means incorrect content gets treated incorrectly. Don't fork the web. But when you do, at least promise us that you'll only do it a finite number of times in the future. Tell us that one day we'll get a browser that renders our standards-compliant content the way the standards say it should look. And to all the other commenters, do anyone want to bet on the development costs incurred on web development projects by Microsoft's inability to respect standards? Should we just send the bills to Microsoft, perhaps? (200 hours at standard consultants rate, for working around the deficiencies in Microsoft browsers on this website. Here's my bank account, please transfer the money ASAP) Perhaps that would make them realize that their "don't break the web" mantra really means "break new content, but preserve old content".
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
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Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Espero que Mark Pilgrim no se enfade conmigo, pero tengo que traducir y poner, sin más comentarios, su maravilloso Microsoft koan: Dijo el monje:   Si me entregas marcado no estándar, lo mostraré siguiendo los estándares. &#1
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Even in pure MS-Terrain this type of switching will create a lot of confusion. How do you communicate to people that conditionals are evaluated differently, depending on the meta tag setting? How about when the doctype conflicts with the meta tag or if there is no doctype present? Can somebody throw in a magic meta tag and make their doctype-less documents render in better-standards-mode? How will the interaction between conditionals and the meta tag be implemented, say - if I have a conditional comment before the meta tag - will IE have to wait for the complete HTML header before being able to evaluate conditionals? How about if the document is malformed and the header is not closed correctly at all? Having two potentially conflicting switching modes could create a plethora of parsing problems in IE. I really don't think I would want to write that parser. And for the rest of the web it's just bad. Probably it's best to just boycott this "feature". IE7 will have to be supported for a long time anyway, so why bother with IE8. Pages in IE will continue to behave slightly worse in some places, which is a good thing in to encourage diversity. And the more diversity there is, the less can any single player (and I mean any) successfully to push through vendor-specific segregation of core web formats. I understand the intention behind this and I believe that Chris really just tries to get around the complaints that would follow if people were pushed to clean up their dirty corners. But in my opinion any approach like this is best left aside. From the point of view of the web as a whole this approach is pretty dangerous and it's just as absurd as the CSS switching policy that apple introduced for the iphone, because they think that they are too good to be handheld yet too special to be really satisfied with normal screen layouts.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
So basically - the best approach seems to be to ignore this option as long as possible and then, at latest after IE7 is dead, use "IE=edge" (if this approach has not already died out already at that point in time.) And if IE=edge becomes re-interpreted and tied to a specific browser release, after "too many" people have started using it, one could always specify something like "IE=100" instead.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Chris, if you are still reading these comments, I think it would really help if you can provide the data for your 200 sites and preferably list what the problems are with each site that will make it incompatible. Providing stats without the data to back them up is not right.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
"Adding a "simple meta tag" may be simple to you, but for the majority of businesses it is not; it costs them money and their sites will be broken - damaged business - irate customers - until they do. They will not be thanking MS for this." For crying out loud, why can't you people understand - you DON'T NEED to update existing websites with this meta tag, as they are already (I presume) working fine with IE7 (WHICH is the default mode in IE8). You only add this tag for newly-developed sites. End of story.
Anonymous
January 23, 2008
Just noticed this on the w3c public-html list. http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Apr/0836.html From: Chris Wilson "IE will have opt-in compliance to the standards over the next few releases." Does few mean 3 in this case? If so does that mean that by the time IE 11 ships it will render in standards mode by default? What is the rough release date for IE 11? - just so we can plan to celebrate.
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
If xslt on the browser is being used to convert xml from the server to html on the browser where is the meta tag placed? On the arsmc.org/documents/gatewayentry.xml site, a PI is used to convert xml to html but then another xslt is used to convert the original xml to the rendered html since the parameters on the url are used to determine the actual rendering of the page and on most browsers parameters have to be passed to xslt using javascript since xslt 1.0 in general has no option for getting the url? In others words, if a XMLHttpRequest on the browser is used to rerender the entire html page including the entire header and body where does the meta tag go?
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
As far as i'm concerned it's microsoft's responsibility to build a browser that conforms to web standards. It's the web developers responsibility to make sure their sites are up to date. It should NOT be microsoft's responsibility to ensure lazy web developers can continue being lazy by not updating their code. Please just give us a browser that supports all web standards I promise the developer community will take care of the rest.
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
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Anonymous
January 24, 2008
From: Chris Wilson "IE will have opt-in compliance to the standards over the next few releases." If this quote is to be read literally, doesn't that just mean that after these few releases the web will still be broken? Cause then IE will not fall back into IE7 mode if the switch is absent. Can anyone of the IE team comment on this please?
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
it is pretty happy that microsoft follow on the web standard, our site will not design two solution for compatibility.
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
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Anonymous
January 24, 2008
After reading the various articles (and comments) on this approach (i.e. the meta tag "switch") I really think that IE 8 should default to the latest and greatest rendering first - not the IE7 rendering engine. For sites that require IE7 or earlier, the meta tag should be used to "turn on" the IE 7 or 6 render mode. Perhaps you could include a little dialog screen that explains that the standard IE 8 mode has been switched to IE 7-6 mode so that end users will start to learn about and ask for standards-based websites. Other then that, the meta-tag "switch" is a decent solution. I am looking forward to an improved standards-based browser experience with IE 8.
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
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Anonymous
January 24, 2008
In the end, all you are doing with this is adding more browser-specific tags to an already convoluted area, much like previous attempts back in the early days. You're also not encouraging users and tools developers to actually make use of the DOCTYPE declaration properly. If you really want to fix this, the best solution is to make your 'standards' mode fully compliant with W3C standards, and the people that deliver content with a broken declaration will have to fix it.
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
I'd love to see this scheme applied to other industries. Maybe a car with mirrored steering, but you work in a switch that makes it work like every other car on the market that you have to flip every time you start it – because some people are used to dealing with your backwards car. Thanks for keeping everyone off the same page for just a little longer, guys.
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
Instead of working on parseing things right, you want us (web designers) to reformat the variables again so that they match your form. This is bad programing ettiqite, you should be working on correctly interpriting standards code, not demanding the web design industry rewrite your input. It is a sign of a lazy programmer, or in this case, team of programmers. It has been said before but it bears repeating, "To what department of microsoft should I send the bill for the hours spent writting ie6 and ie7 only css?"
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
It's ok. We will ignore IE8, as we did for IE7 and assume that it's an IE6. However idiots were expecting us to support 3 versions of browser?
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
My first gut reaction was to get really angry. However, now I have counted to ten and tried to read everything by Zeldman, Eric meyer and PPK in good faith. They are my gurus after all. And I do think Chris Wilkson is acting in good faith. Still, if the flow chart I am making for my students is correct (se below) there is a fundamental flow to the proposed switch (besides its very idea). A metatag should not be allowed to override an HTTP-header. That's the way it is with character encoding, which also is a parsing issue. My flowcart is at http://gunther.ne.keryx.se/ie8-metatag.svg The SVG was made in a hurry and it might not render properly... My Linux FFox (2.0.10) handles it superbly, my Win-version (2.0.11) messes it up badly. Opera on Win does a descent job. Safari beta on Win does not get it. IE users need to go here: http://gunther.ne.keryx.se/ie8-metatag.png Corrections can be sent to gunther at keryx dot se...
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
Lots of comments here :) i check few and found some suggesting to "super standards" mode on by default. thats a good idea. but why not IE should detect the tags in the header, if page says that its using HTML Strict, then treat that page in "super standard" mode, and viseversa for other modes :) so, previous pages will not break, while standards following sites work as expected. best, // chall3ng3r //
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
Can you tell the folks on the MSDN site (or any other MS site that does this) To stop with the fullscreen overlay to install Silverlight! I do not want to install it, yet every day that I load the page up, it RE-PESKS me to install it. Set a cookie (2-3months minimum), or do it in a less intrusive way please!
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
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Anonymous
January 24, 2008
Response to Eric Meyer's take on the subject: http://alistapart.com/comments/fromswitchestotargets?page=7#68 STOP THE MADNESS. VOTE ON THIS AND ON ELECTION DAY.
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
As of writing this there were only 10 fewer comments here against this than there are comments cheering on the IE team for getting ACID2 to render right. This ought to be a clue to someone in the IE team that perhaps another solution is in order since this one isn't likely to be welcomed/used/wanted/etc... It's at least what I'd be doing if I worked there, as is I'm glad it's not my job. Don't worry though, I'm sure that you'll come up with something better if you go back to the drawing board and try. I'll even be willing to wait a bit to hear about it, but it should be done in the open on here once you have the basics done. All this random stuff being made behind closed doors has got to stop.
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
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Anonymous
January 24, 2008
I was quite excited about IE8 being finally standards compliant following the ACID2 post, but now the excitement has gone :-( Honestly if you are going to have any credibilty in the community for having a standards compliant browser providing down-stream support for IE's previous failures to comply with standards is just asking for a well deserved backlash in the press. As many people have said - simply develop a totally new product - abandon IE. If you brand it as somethign new that is only standards compliant the problem goes away
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
Before we lose our minds on what this meta tag actually does can you please explain the extent of what changes in IE8 Standards Mode. Will all the CSS2.1 be fixed? whitespace bugs?, links not accepting hierarchy styling fixed?, styling of select list options fixed? styling of legend's in fieldset's fixed? I haven't decided if I like this meta tag or not, but what worries me is all the fuss over a tag that we still don't know will fix! if setting this tag, only fixes 10% of IE's CSS and JavaScript bugs then I don't want it, it isn't worth it. If this fixes 90%+ of IE's CSS and JavaScript bugs, then I'll do whatever it takes to get the better rendered output! thanks.
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
Since you are rewritting the engine, make it so that you have IE6/7 and IE8 install on the computer at the same time. Either make super standards the default (not preferred) or by a recent doctype (I think that everyone agrees that this is better) On the page properties, TELL WHAT MODE YOU ARE RUNNING UNDER (not just a obscure javascript property). Allow via the browser to change the mode. Allow via policies overriding the mode. I think most people agree that adding a proprietary IE tag is not good and is the opposite of what standards is trying to acheive. It would be nice if W3C would add conditional comments as part of a standard, because even with standards there are still special cases.
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
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Anonymous
January 24, 2008
Just use HTML5 DOCTYPE and all gets resolved. John Resig of Mozilla Corp.: http://ejohn.org/blog/html5-doctype/
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
Yep, I'm going with the "HTML 5 doctype".
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
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Anonymous
January 24, 2008
I don't get it at all... adding a metatag to new sites to tell IE8 NOT to behave like IE7 -- who thought that one up ?? Modifying an old/non-standard site to provide a "this is an IE7/6/5 (whatever) site" metatag for any possible IE8 browsers to use, should be the responsibility of the webmaster, and is certainly a trivial task in any dynamic technology such as ASP etc... just hook the render (or equiv) event and stuff it in there.
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
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Anonymous
January 24, 2008
Please don't do this. The burden should not be on web developer to implement weird code to "achieve" standards. Doctype is a reasonable standard, metatags are not. If you must, make IE8 have a radio button that decides if it runs in a standard (non ie7) way, have that radio button default to on. The burden should be on the end user if it is to be on anyone. Argh.
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
Diplo said it perfectly above. Just read his post and take his advice. It's the only proper decision.
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
Very nice features, very good decision.
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
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Anonymous
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Anonymous
January 24, 2008
Why don't you use SuperStandards by default on all pages that are modified after some date? Using Quirks by default means new broken pages beeing written, as many people "test" their pages by running them in IE. And those are not the kind of people who read documentation!
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
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January 24, 2008
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Anonymous
January 24, 2008
@droid - Is that you Steve? Stop annoying the developers, developers, developers...
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January 24, 2008
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January 25, 2008
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January 25, 2008
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Anonymous
January 25, 2008
For the future of the web, please reconsider! Do you really want web developers to have to worry about browser compatibility for another decade? You have a real chance here to move us into a new era where web sites are written for standards, not browsers (which is how it was always supposed to be). Don't throw away that opportunity. Future web developers will either thank you or revile you. Which do you want?
Anonymous
January 25, 2008
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Anonymous
January 25, 2008
@cwilso I think this is an excellent suggestion, but I'd like to ask MS to rethink the details of the syntactic implementation slightly before this goes further. I'm suggesting that either the meta 'label' or the tokens used in its value need to be 'namespaced'. Q1) X-UA-Compatible itself: Is there a move to standardise this header name? If not then it should be renamed to X-Microsoft-UA-Compatible as Microsoft 'own' and define the syntax of its permitted values. (Other mfrs might want to implement X-UA-Vastco too.) Q2) If you go down the route that leads us to having a single X-UA-Compatible header name potentially used by multiple browser mfrs, as opposed to a world of X-Apple-UA-Compatible X-Opera-UA-Compatible etc etc, side by side, then the tokens in the value string should be NAMESPACED. For example, FF=Firefox, who owns this hacky set of enumerated values and which manufacturer owns/defines the token value FF? The following would be legal under this proposal: either (a) X-UA-Compatible="Microsoft:IE=8;Mozilla:FF=3" or (b1) X-Microsoft-UA-Compatible="IE=8" X-Mozilla-UA-Compatible="FF=3" or could simplify the rhs if desired (b2) X-Microsoft-UA-Compatible="8" X-Mozilla-Firefox-UA-Compatible="3" I don't want these suggestions taken tooo literally. You can improve on these, I'm sure. Make sense? Thoughts?
Anonymous
January 25, 2008
@Baptiste >> Why don't you use SuperStandards by default on all pages that are modified after some date? Web applications. They produce absolutely "fresh" content for every request, but the code that produces the page might be a dinosaur.
Anonymous
January 25, 2008
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January 25, 2008
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Anonymous
January 25, 2008
Wow droid, how's it feel to be an MS employee too embarrassed to actually post here using your real name. How about an example of this supposedly standard code that Firefox chokes and dies horribly on? How about proof that not only FF dies on it but IE somehow handles it better? Given IE still fails basic CSS2 things from 10 years ago I really doubt you can show anything, so sit down, and get back to work fixing your browser. If you aren't part of the IE team do everything you can to help them anyway you can. I'm sure they need it right about now. Whatever you do, don't ever bother to come back here with your profane trolling cap on, it's not welcome.
Anonymous
January 25, 2008
I agree with what someone said up near the top - dump the UA string you're using now. I can't imagine how much bandwidth would be saved if everyone stopped stuffing the word Mozilla into the browser identifier (never mind all the .Net cruft). (didn't attempt to read all the comments because I can't - firefox 3 chokes rendering the background :)
Anonymous
January 25, 2008
Obviously since web devs are expected to support IE7 for a while after the IE8 release, I would like to see a patch for IE 6+7 that alerts users that a page is using the new standards mode and that they should download IE8. If we still need to support IE 7 for a while, everyone will just tell IE8 to use IE7 rendering mode and the pages go nowhere.
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January 25, 2008
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January 25, 2008
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January 25, 2008
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January 25, 2008
I agree with that I think the consensus (at least on this blog post) - that the meta tag should cause an opt-out of standards mode, not an opt-in. I think allowing users to switch the compatibility mode manually would help alleviate problems with broken sites that go un-repaired. Maybe you could identify patterns associated with the "IE workarounds" in the broken sites and prompt users with the information bar that a site might look better with a previous rendering engine. I know that would be a lot of work, but it would be pretty much the best of all worlds.
Anonymous
January 25, 2008
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Anonymous
January 25, 2008
@cwilso : You're courageous to expose your architecture strategies openly. I don't think your shooting yourself in the foot for the years to come though. For my part I would prefer a lot that IE try to conform to standards by default and that this behavior be expected for the versions to come. Microsoft goal is to make the usage of IE8 the least painful for the end user. I'm OK with that. Everybody is. But what is a fix in the short term will be a bad decision in the long term. And the end user will pay for it then. You have genius guys of UI design in your team. Someone could come up with a fine idea to switch rendering engines without generating fear for the end user.
Anonymous
January 25, 2008
I'm not sure what I think of the idea as a whole but the idea that sites not using the tag will be automatically rendered in IE7 is definitely problematic in my mind. Have you considered building in some kind of doctype check as well? Sites not using the meta tag but using HTML5 or XHTML2 could probably be safely treated as desiring the edge treatment and maybe also sites using strict doc-types? Also, the idea of identifying IE8 as a new browser rather than IE is one that seems to have merit to me (http://alistapart.com/comments/beyonddoctype?page=6#59). Is there a response to this idea somewhere on the web that I could read? Thanks for all your hard work. This is definitely a problem that needs solving.
Anonymous
January 25, 2008
Microsoft has announced, that the upcoming release of Internet Explorer will render standard-compliant web pages in a non-standard way. Standard-compliant rendering requires a non-standard page tag. Huh? welcome to the mirror palace! If you get t
Anonymous
January 25, 2008
Guys, I need to see some statistics. How many sites that were designed for IE7 would break if IE8 came with "closer to standards mode" by default? Give me some numbers! Old sites that were designed for IE6 should stay in quirks mode. We're only talking about sites updated for IE7 that could potentially break for IE8, right? I need to see some numbers so that I can come to the same conclusion. It's very easy to come up with arguments such as "it will break non-profit sites" that don't have the money to update them. OK, how many are there? Are we talking about 10%, 5%, or 1%?! Now look at it from the other side. How much headache are you going to cause to web developers that need to increase the complexity of their site now and in the future? How much more is this move going to cost current and future developments? I trust you guys analyzed the market before making this decision and didn't just follow your instincts? So, what ARE the numbers?! Thank you.
Anonymous
January 25, 2008
Off Topic but WHY IS THERE NO RIGHT CLICK SEARCH FEATURE ON IE7? Come on guys, it should be a snap for you to implement. I know MANY people who are hooked on firefox just because they can right click and search google. This is ABSOLUTELY STUPID to not have as a default feature in internet explorer. WAKE UP!
Anonymous
January 25, 2008
IE8は新しく搭載するレンダリングモードを非デフォルト扱いにするそうです。 IE6とか用に作ったコン...
Anonymous
January 25, 2008
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January 26, 2008
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January 26, 2008
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Anonymous
January 26, 2008
I think the better solution is to is Super Standard always on and the possibility to manage a custom list of site that need different compatibility mode. So if a particular site has a wrong behavior, you just add for example "www.oldsite.com" to that list with compatibility mode IE6. Standard should be standard non-standard should be an exception.
Anonymous
January 26, 2008
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Anonymous
January 26, 2008
@re-tooling - I would expect many a site in this category are based on internally built tools and templates, that do a lot more than just generate the HTML / CSS output, either by the company themselves (who don't want to do it again), or a third party (who would probably charge a new development fee).
Anonymous
January 26, 2008
I'm torn on this whole issue. I can't decide if this is really evil, or just plain stupid.
Anonymous
January 26, 2008
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Anonymous
January 26, 2008
Bad idea, really. People develop websites for the world, not for a browser.
Anonymous
January 26, 2008
wilson: - “Quirks mode” remains the same, and compatible with current content. me: ok wilson: - “Standards mode” remains the same as IE7, and compatible with current content. me: not ok. I want standards mode to be displayed as much standard as possible. wilson: - If you (the page developer) really want the best standards support IE8 can give, you can get it by inserting a simple <meta> element. Aaron gives more details on this in his article. me: I dont want to target browsers. It will be code as bad as with sound and video. I understand why you do this, but it is wrong in the long term. When eg Sweden changed to right hand driving, all had to follow. Just let the pages brake mr. Wilson.
Anonymous
January 26, 2008
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Anonymous
January 26, 2008
Chris, If we do have to have an opt-in switch can we just insure it only controls changes that have the potential to break existing sites. One of the best things I think you could do would be to implement dom levels 1 and 2 as per the specs. All/almost all of that could be done just by adding new apis and deprecating old ones, with no danger at all of breaking old sites. The same is true with css2 features that aren't presently supported in any fashion (like css table support). That would make this a far less bitter pill to swallow.
Anonymous
January 26, 2008
Backward compatibility is an excellent goal. I believe the default behavior for any browser going forward, reading standards-compliant html and css files, is to render the page in standards mode. Please make sure that targeting for previous, non-standards-compliant browsers is the meta tag, not the other way around.
Anonymous
January 26, 2008
So, in other words, IE8 will not pass Acid2. In fact, in regards to standards, it will a grand total of zero bug fixes when compared to IE7. The reason being that it will default to IE7 rendering, even though it is theoretically capable of doing better. Why even bother?
Anonymous
January 26, 2008
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Anonymous
January 26, 2008
@ gordon I don't think it's a perfect idea, just a good idea. I'd prefer not to have to do anything to opt in but if it means a severe improvement in CSS and JavaScript who I am to complain of a simple meta element? I do a lot of reading and try to understand people's point of view and frankly if I can at least agree partially I think I may have achieved that. I would imagine my suggestion of going by doctype versions was rejected because some people may have written XHTML 1.1 pages (served as text/html even) for IE 6.0 or even earlier for example. Because I have a very clean and easy to work with serverside templating system I've built myself it shouldn't be an issue to insert a meta element in to a single file for the whole site to opt in to standards. IE 6.0 is the Netscape 4 of our day currently. Remember when we all complained about dealing with Netscape 4? I can at least throw some conditional comments to fix almost all CSS errors in IE 5.0+ (and a second stylesheet for IE 4 even) but you just can't do anything half decent with Netscape 4. I approve of the slow trickle of news coming from the IE team on one condition: IE8 will be much bigger then any one has any clue it could be. Here's hoping it is because in a few years the only opting-in anyone should be doing is email related.
Anonymous
January 26, 2008
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January 26, 2008
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January 26, 2008
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Anonymous
January 26, 2008
IE8 should default to IE8's rendering engine. Very easy to understand from a web developers point of view and even their bosses. If the boss says there's no budget to fix the site for IE8, then a developer simply has to insert a meta tag to target IE7.
Anonymous
January 26, 2008
Ignore conditional comments, change User-Agent string raddicaly, remove document.all (similar "improvements" too) and delete IE6- and IE7- compatibile modes. IE8 will be recognized as a new, standards-enabled browser. No more problems for web developers. Include OpenDocument Format in Office and then Microsoft will be OK, if it will not use its monopoly position again.
Anonymous
January 26, 2008
Actually I don't care about compatibility. I just use IE as a end-user. So what happens under the hood I (like hundreds of millions) don't care. But how about new features? Can we expect a post soon?
Anonymous
January 27, 2008
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Anonymous
January 27, 2008
Please make IE8 standards compliant by default.
Anonymous
January 27, 2008
this is bad now Microsoft will end up having to support 3 4 5 render modes in next few years this will add to the size of the ie codebase and make up many new security bugs it will be like having all the secuity bugs of ie7 rendering engine plus quirks mode plus the new ie8 rendering engine it would be better if you just brake the web and do away with this new super standards mode in the long run this will probably be viewed as the worse security move ms has made even worse then ms blaster was
Anonymous
January 27, 2008
Good news, but I hope actions will follow to the talking :)
Anonymous
January 27, 2008
Well, at least you could make it such that the newest browser engine is invoked when there is a newer doctype, say for HTML 5...
Anonymous
January 27, 2008
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Anonymous
January 27, 2008
IE8 will be known as the browser that never was, because by the time people can start taking advantage of its standards support, the next version of IE would have replaced it. By that time the meta tag will be forgotten and will likely never be used. It will be replaced with <!DOCTYPE html>.
Anonymous
January 27, 2008
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January 27, 2008
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Anonymous
January 27, 2008
For the sake of not upsetting some badly coded big websites you will be preventing IE users from getting the best standards rendering on a huge number of websites. It is highly likely that the majority of websites will NOT implement your meta tag, either because they don't know about it, or don't want to use it for various legitimate reasons (and some just because they don't like IE/MS). You maanged to help these big broken websites fix their issues for IE7 so surely you can do it again if necessary. Personally if you continue with this flawed idea I will be using the registry key to force IE8 mode.
Anonymous
January 27, 2008
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Anonymous
January 28, 2008
What I'm still wondering is, will IE8 support the XHTML MIME type? If so, I suppose the modes would go as follows: Almost standards mode (IE7 mode) in IE 8+n - text/html - no meta HTML 4.0 Strict, Transitional XHTML 1.0 Strict, Transitional, Frameset Standards mode (IE8 + n) in IE 8+n - text/html + meta HTML 4.0 Strict, Transitional XHTML 1.0 Strict, Transitional, Frameset HTML 5+n IE8+n - application/xhtml+xml XHTML 1.0 Strict, Transitional, Frameset XHTML n ("n" stands for future version numbers, or the current version number) Sounds quite good, wouldn't you say? That is, IF, and only IF, IE8 supports application/xhtml+xml.
Anonymous
January 28, 2008
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January 28, 2008
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January 28, 2008
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Anonymous
January 28, 2008
"The cries for "make it work in super standards mode by default" must be coming from people who prefer to make their money by charging their clients to fix their sites when a new browser version becomes popular." WRONG! It's coming from people who did it right the first time, and have been doing it right for the last, oh, I dunno, 6 or 7 years? Shame shame microsoft; just when I was warming up to you for making IE 7 play nice.
Anonymous
January 28, 2008
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January 28, 2008
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January 28, 2008
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January 28, 2008
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January 28, 2008
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January 28, 2008
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January 28, 2008
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January 28, 2008
In answer to the 2 posts above: The user shouldn't be concerned with site compatibility, it should just work for them no matter what (at least if a site is properly coded). I don't expect kids or grandmas to switch rendering modes (or even understand what's a rendering mode), when they only want to visit pages and be done with it. The validator idea isn't bad, and I support it... However, I see 2 flaws in it: 1- It'd only trigger the super standards mode if the page has 0 error? If not, how many errors? Or maybe analyze things in a more complex way, that'd require more thinking... 2- Performances... The page code would need to be parsed before the rendering even starts, that'd slow down things significantly, something IE clearly doesn't need, as it's already behind every other browser. As a person who doesn't use IE, I wouldn't mind, though. I only care about browsers displaying my sites fine, but if they have usability issues, that's not specific to my site and doesn't concern me.
Anonymous
January 28, 2008
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January 28, 2008
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Anonymous
January 28, 2008
Put it where it belongs - not in html, but in css. CSS is for style, HTML is for content. The content isn't the issue, it is the style!
Anonymous
January 28, 2008
I'm not sure whether anyone in the IE team will ever get to read this comment, but I hope to just mention a little point. Making IE8 work with old webpages that support IE6 is basically something that is both challenging and not quite doable, as Chris Wilson already knows. I would strongly suggest Microsoft to branch out into a new browser, name it something else other than IE, and then start from there. There is no need to break any of the old pages. If the old pages don't follow the standards, then by definition, they are already broken, and so, who would be able to support that in the long run and be able to comply with standards also? Branching off into a new IE not only reduces confusion for webpage developers, but also for end-users. With a clean branch-off, you can declare openly "We want to follow the standards as they are". By adhering to the old IE way of doing things, it is quite impossible to follow any standards. If not, there can always be room for one of those strange options "Render pages according to IE6 and IE7", which can be re-phrased as an option that says: "Don't comply with standards". Strange, isn't it? And there is really no need to blame anyone, flame anyone, or write any negative comments about this blog. I think we are in fair ground here and we're not expecting any superman here who can churn out perfect code for a huge piece of software like a web-browser. I am trying to remain neutral. :-)
Anonymous
January 28, 2008
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Anonymous
January 28, 2008
@cwilso: As a developer who has had to account for IE eccentricities for ten years now I can say I'm not totally happy with this solution. I understand why you're taking this approach, I just don't like it, and the clandestine, blackbox methods you, the IE team, and MS in general used to get here. It just feels dirty, and unbecoming. Let's try to work on our community friednliness in future okay? With that said, having read almost 96% of the comments (and your responses) I think you'd find the overwhelming majority of the web developer community would be happy if IE8 fully supported the following: application/xhtml+xml rendering Full support for CSS 2.1 What do you guys say... how about actually putting out a post that says something like "IE8 By default will..." and pick the top two or three (note I'm not asking for hte top ten or twenty fixes) highest priority fixes as determined in conjunction with the community. If you guys in Redmond give the developer community a chance, you'd find out we're not a bad group of guys after all...
Anonymous
January 28, 2008
Dear Mr Chris Wilson, If you've read this far, I congratulate you :) In amongst the downpour of anger/frustration etc, I'd like to add 1 vote here for the "I think what you've done makes sense" basket. I think it's a little sad we're here, in this situation, but there's a lot of smart people on the case (like yourself) that have thought this through and I, for one, can understand why you are taking the approach you are. And I hope you keep up the good work. You're 1 persistent guy :)
Anonymous
January 28, 2008
you guys are making more work for the fancy group meetings and working groups you'll have to form when thinking about ie9. there's never a good time to break it, so do it now. you know you should have done it already!!
Anonymous
January 28, 2008
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January 28, 2008
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Anonymous
January 28, 2008
I sincerely hope IE8 will be released for XP. I don't see my company (web-design) upgrading all machines to Vista because of IE8.
Anonymous
January 28, 2008
Another way to avoid this meta tag would be for IE to consider something similar to Opera's browser.js which applies fixes to sites that have issues in their browser that they haven't been able to get fixed by the owner. Microsoft could use this approach to either apply minor code fixes, or to switch certain pages to IE7 mode automatically, avoiding the need for IE8 to be stuck in the past as a default. It would be easy for Microsoft to provide updates to this every few weeks via Windows Update, and it would give them more time to work with the websites that apparantly are going to have problems with IE8 standards mode.
Anonymous
January 28, 2008
Public Bug Tracking would be a nice touch for all of us developers trying to deal with IEs bugs. Public Bug Tracking is the first step in many to get IE back into the development game. Public Bug Tracking is the most needed tool for the IE team. Public Bug Tracking is the 2 words that EVERY developer on this blog have been asking for since it was started. Public Bug Tracking is what MS shut down just as it was about to get started. Public Bug Tracking is what separates a good browser from ones developers don't care about. Public Bug Tracking is long overdue. Public Bug Tracking is the only thing we want to hear about on this blog. Public Bug Tracking will allow users to troubleshoot bugs. Public Bug Tracking is the last straw,... the Camel's back is waiting to hear the answer. Public Bug Tracking. Public Bug Tracking. Public Bug Tracking. Are we clear yet? Public Bug Tracking is what we want. Public Bug Tracking is what we need. Public Bug Tracking is the only solution to so many of IE's problems. Public Bug Tracking. Public Bug Tracking. Public Bug Tracking. Public Bug Tracking. Thanks
Anonymous
January 29, 2008
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Anonymous
January 29, 2008
@cwilso What happens if the value for this meta tag (or HTTP header) is "IE=9; IE=8; IE=7"? And what happens if IE9 comes across a value of "IE=10"? Can I assume that if future versions of IE don't recognise the version in the meta tag then they will default to IE7 rendering? And if there is a list of IE values then will IE go through them in the order they're provided until it finds a mode it does support and then use it (rather than choosing the highest supported value regardless of its position in the list), a bit like the way it decides which font to use from a comma-separated list with the CSS 'font-family' property?
Anonymous
January 29, 2008
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Anonymous
January 29, 2008
PS: to answer your other message, although I'm not Chris Wilson: I was pretty sure IE was going to trigger the latest standard mode available if the requested IE version is above the one you're viewing the site with. That way, let's say you ask for IE=10, and view the site with IE8, then it'll use the super standards mode of IE8. That also means "IE=1000" would have the same effect as "IE=edge", even though it's less clean. And until IE 1000 comes out, but I doubt we'll see the day. That just made me realize... The fact you'll be able to target a specific version of IE pretty much means all the upcoming versions of IE will keep using the current numeral system. IE8, IE9, IE10 etc... No IE.next or whatever.
Anonymous
January 29, 2008
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January 29, 2008
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Anonymous
January 29, 2008
All I can say is I hope this is a classic: "We'll introduce feature X, everyone!" Crowd boos. "No! Don't do it!" "Ok we won't. See how we listen? Let's be friends."
Anonymous
January 29, 2008
why do we need a new IE? just tell your users to upgrade to firefox. fire your IE division and spend that money on.... who knows at least it'll be better spent.
Anonymous
January 29, 2008
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Anonymous
January 29, 2008
Why not have a preferences field that lets you list sites that you want to exhibit the old behaviour. This way, intranet sites won't be broken (this preference can be set via group policies), but you can have superstandards mode enabled by default. Also, have a button where the user can revert a page to the old rendering mode if they wish. The suggestion as it stands makes it nearly impossible for other browsers to maintain a competitive codebase. In many ways this decision is anti-competitive.
Anonymous
January 29, 2008
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January 29, 2008
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Anonymous
January 29, 2008
One thing I forgot to mention: Sometimes it's better to let the past (legacy) die, or to put it in a Virtual Machine...
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
It appears that the results of testing much of JavaScript in Firefox, IE and Safari indicate that IE has a long way to go if it plans to fix IE so that version 8 doesn't have version 7's problems. http://www.coachwei.com/blog/_archives/2008/1/22/3480119.html @Looking for screenshots: Yeah, we are ALL anxiously awaiting this! I was glad to hear in the IE team chats that this was definately on the roadmap for the "next" version of IE (which we now know is IE8) I don't think it will be an amazing tool like "FireBug", but if it is as good as the default javascript: console in Firefox, that would be a 100 times better than what IE has now.
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
Chris Wilson and co., I don't like this for a lot of reasons. Many of them already stated by others here. But if there is no stopping you from putting in a switch like this, might I suggest it be a switch inside a CSS file, and not in the HTML. I have sites that have a lot of template files/ master pages, and these would all have to be updated, however CSS files are few, and there is usually a single master (or could be!) that contains this switch. This would make testing/QA easier as well, because I would only need to update one file to test an entire site. It could be as simple as: html { filter: XUACompatible.Microsoft.RenderIE8('true'); } I even tried to make it verbose, just the way you guys like it.
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
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Anonymous
January 30, 2008
It even gives me a way to target future/previous browsers. I could have:
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
If Microsoft does decide to go ahead with this despite the opposition, I will be setting the header on my webserver to IE=edge. I know it's not want MS want us to use, but its the best way to ensure IE users get the most up to date engine, and perhaps convince MS to reconsider.
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
"By the way, why do you need to place that META tag when the sites work already with IE7? Without it IE8 will behave like IE7, and no problems (yet)...Only when you need to change the site, it is wise to put this META tag along with it" As for me, I can think of 2 good reasons to switch to 8 or edge right way: 1- I've been starting to make stuff that don't work in IE, but that still degrades gracefully with it (using some CSS2/3 properties not supported in IE7 and below). So switching to super standards mode would make such sites look better... 2- It's unlikely they'll do any more work on the IE7 engine apart from fixing major security flaws, which might mean it'll keep being about as slow, while more recent rendering modes could be faster. Just a guess...
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
I think the problem is three things: The web developers & designers aren't updating the sites soon enough, the browsers aren't strict enough about standards, and the new browser versions don't start getting used soon enough. If the designers/developers are to slow to update, nobody will want to use the new browser versions. The designers/developers need to update the site to follow standards even if the browser does still work with the old site so that the non-standardness can be removed in the next version. This is how things get phased out, or deprecated. Designers and developers should want to update to standards, because it definitely makes cross-browser coding easier. But I think it's actually the site owners that are to blame, they don't want to pay their web people the money to update the existing code.
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
Why update every file on the server when you can simply do this with a comment in the master CSS file. Keep in mind that when using multiple CSS files the first must not use a title attribute in the link element.
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
@John A. Bilicki III What is your comment about the title attribute all about? Is this another IE bug? @cwilso I believe many people have asked you already but I will ask again. What exactly will setting this flag fix in IE8? Will this fix the DOM? will I need to still keep hacking to overcome bugs in the DOM in IE8, and IE9, and IE10, IE???? I appreciate CSS fixes but to be honest I would much rather have a fixed DOM. With a fixed DOM, I can write code to fix all of IE's CSS bugs before or after they occur. (not including missing features like rounded borders) With a fixed DOM I won't give a hoot about the broken CSS because I can programmatically fix the browser and make it work properly myself rather than waiting for IE12 to go RTM!
Anonymous
January 30, 2008
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Anonymous
January 31, 2008
Some great quotes from Dave Massy (ex. MSIE) "I’m more than aware that it is easier to develop for Firefox than IE" - Dave Massy "I have used it over the past year on a couple of projects." - Dave Massy "What is the point you are trying to make? That Firefox is a more developer friendly browser? Tell me something I don’t know." - Dave Massy Ex Program manager starts telling the truth about the browser industry, once he leaves the Seattle pastures. http://dmassy.com/details.aspx?Entry=32 Yet oddly enough on this blog we talk about fixing IE and making it better and all we get is silence!? Developing for any other browser than IE is great because people want to help you, are willing to listen, and can point you to workarounds and APIs that indicate the TRUE status of an implementation - not just how it is supposed to work. Where's that bug tracking site gone? We haven't even been told what is in IE8 yet, but I know I'm going to be ticked off as soon as I use it because I'm going to see all the same old bugs, and a bunch of new ones, and I'm almost sure that there will not be a system available for me to track issues with! Simon
Anonymous
January 31, 2008
@ Joesef No, it's actually a weird standard. When you use multiple linked style sheets the first for who knows what reason must not use a title attribute. You also must use the exact same title value otherwise those stylesheets will not be applied.
Anonymous
January 31, 2008
Ok <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" /> to make XHTML TRANSITIONAL pages behave in a different way they did before kind of makes sense. What doesn't make sense to me is why you'd need to apply this to XHTML STRICT pages. Anything that has been designed as XHTML STRICT, you can be 99.9% sure it's been design against the strictest standard you could imagine. What are the odds of someone using XHTML STRICT otherwise? XHTML STRICT pages should automatically behave like <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge" /> unless otherwise specified!
Anonymous
January 31, 2008
Francois: in case you didn't notice, many sites have a XHTML Strict doctype while having hundreds of markup issues. Sometimes due to copying/pasting code from other sites, but mostly from using WYSIWYG editors that add that doctype by default.
Anonymous
January 31, 2008
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Anonymous
January 31, 2008
Nice... 600+ comments, about 10 of them like the <meta /> feature. Let's see how it will go. But don't say nobody warned you.
Anonymous
January 31, 2008
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Anonymous
January 31, 2008
Eye Veh ... when will the hoops we have to jump through, to tweak a "standards" page so that it looks right in MSIE, ever end? It's really defeating the whole benefits of having standards and consumes untold developer man-hours every day. Sure, there's a need to support legacy code, deal with the tag-soup that [i]used to be[/i] the Internet and, well ... if WYSIWYG authoring software defaults to a XHTML-strict DOCTYPE ... then the software should spit out XHTML-strict code, shouldn't it? That's what the HTML 4 and XHTML-transitional doctypes are for. Geez. The way forward should be: For similar Quirks mode behavior - do something. For IE7-similar standards mode behavior - do something. For the best standards mode behavior - do nothing. Don't force web-standards authors to have to add a superfluous tag. Instead, provide incentive toward web-standards by forcing non-standards authors to "insert a simple meta-tag", so their non-standard pages don't break in the face of a more-standards-oriented browser. It's the same reason the U.S. isn't on the metric system ... they piddled around, supported the "old-way" and didn't jump in with both feet. JUMP into standards! -stk
Anonymous
January 31, 2008
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Anonymous
January 31, 2008
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Anonymous
January 31, 2008
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Anonymous
January 31, 2008
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Anonymous
January 31, 2008
http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/2007/02/27/the-cost-of-monoculture/
Anonymous
January 31, 2008
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Anonymous
February 01, 2008
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Anonymous
February 01, 2008
Judging from this and previous blog entries, it seems that Chris Wilson only bothers with the comments until the day after the blog entry is published. After that he's gone.
Anonymous
February 01, 2008
Its 5pm on Friday, where is the "try to sneak it in post"? Surely there must be something highly controversial that MS is planning to do to ruin the web? Why not post about it instead of real news on JavaScript or bug tracking? Am I going to have to wait til Monday for my blood to boil?
Anonymous
February 01, 2008
http://ghepardoo.blogspot.com/2008/02/make-money-online-quick-and-easy.html
Anonymous
February 01, 2008
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Anonymous
February 01, 2008
http://www.buy-wow-gold.org.cn/ 在这儿呢，看到啦？
Anonymous
February 01, 2008
I would like to propose an alternative, even if late. Why don't you guys just check the mime type of the document being sent from the server? If the mime type is text/html then keep compatible behavior, regardless of wether HTML5 4 or XHTML is served. If the server sends an XHTML or an XML HTML 5 document, with BOTH a correct doctype header, and sent properly with an XML mime-type, then IE8 can run is "super standards" mode. As almost no sites serve their web pages as XML, this should be good enough "switch." Just my thoughts.
Anonymous
February 02, 2008
@jeanph01 re: "You have genius guys of UI design in your team" - Uhm what?! You obviously aren't talking about the IE7 UI team! Old dialogs from 1998 are still in use, the menu was turned off by default until they finally came to their senses. the toolbar it right-aligned causing the cascading menus to flip-flop left and right, you can't close the last tab, printing issues out the wazoo, reload and stop buttons are on the wrong side of the location bar, no favicons in the quick search bar, can't drag links to new tabs, can't drag a link to the location bar, zooming is completely messed up, status bar quirks and hidden options, focus stealing windows etc. etc. I agree the IE Team can certainly incorporate some sort of button to switch to "1990" rendering to solve this mess, but lets not call them "genius" until they come close to deserving that title. Zack
Anonymous
February 02, 2008
I must say, the mere thought of using a META tag to elicit a "super standard mode" is frustrating...
Anonymous
February 02, 2008
If this problem only affects Internet Explorer due to the fact that sites check for the agent string or whatever, then just radically change the agent string! http://www.homegymresource.com
Anonymous
February 02, 2008
That's interesting. PS it will be cool if ms redesign interface of IE
Anonymous
February 02, 2008
I would like to suggest you folks at MS seriously consider this suggestion, over at Dean Edwards' Blog: http://dean.edwards.name/weblog/2008/01/quotes/#comment184376 In summary, the suggestion is to make the default behavior (i.e., the rendering engine) user-togglable as in Firefox when using IETab, while still allowing meta or HTTP header control as the proposal here suggests. Of course, I would add that even once the developer specifies modern or compatible rendering, the user could explicitly override that choice. In other words, the setting priority would be as follows, from lowest to highest: user default, server setting, user override. This allows modern rendering to be the default, while users that need compatibility with older systems can configure their browsers to comply with that need on user-specified sites. The greatest potential cost would be to recently upgraded users or legacy intranet systems, who were the most important and most troublesome segment in IE7 hangups, from what I understand. In this case, however, if the interface is reasonably clear (i.e., not buried as in NS8), learning and troubleshooting should be quick, cheap, and painless.
Anonymous
February 02, 2008
Sorry: recently upgraded users or legacy intranet systems should read recently upgraded users ON legacy intranet systems Normally I wouldn't bothering correcting little things like that, but I felt it changed the meaning quite a bit.
Anonymous
February 02, 2008
Add the versioning properties to future versions of the DOCTYPE.... no need to make it another tag and no further degrading of the DOCTYPEs importance especially in older pages.
Anonymous
February 02, 2008
I've had a policy against posting on big news that's likely to be common knowledge in the Microsoft development
Anonymous
February 03, 2008
It's fine and dandy to think about the intranets made for IE6 when considering this only when it's known how many of those intranets would actually have a proper doctype and trigger standards mode in IE8 should IE8 be made to work like all the other browsers. If the intranet is made up of enough garbage code that it requires IE6 I'd feel safe in putting my money on it probably not having a doctype, or at least not an xhtml (any) or a html strict one. If I've already said I want to use the standards compliant rendering mode I expect EVERY BROWSER CAPABLE to render my site using it's standards mode WITHOUT ADDITIONAL CODE. With version 8 IE is finally becoming capable, but now you're telling me only if I include additional code. This is wrong, we are sick of this, I'm not going to do ANYTHING more for IE, it will forever remain locked back with IE7 in the stone age unless you fix it. Yes, I'm going to willfully give IE users a lower quality experience than everyone else and let them know that they could be seeing more with a real browser. I'm done with writing my site multiple times for each form of your browser and am not interested in having to add in a new tag now so that your one browser that supposedly works knows it's supposed to start working.
Anonymous
February 03, 2008
Get Firefox already. Explorer was a last cause like, years ago. Feh.
Anonymous
February 03, 2008
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Anonymous
February 03, 2008
Yet another meta tag yawn Yes, I do appreciate your efforts to provide backwards compatibility, but this will only prevent the web from taking a long-expected step forward yet another time. Guess why the word is "standard" -precisely, because it should be standard and as such, it must be an opt-out for the users that explicitly wish to go other ways. At least for locally stored files (= the "old CD files" problem), I find the timestamp idea mentioned above is pretty good (search for "modified"). Choose by this parameter whatever ancient rendering mode you might have had at the time the file was last modified. If this way of handling the problem does not work on the web - well, I see it's a non-trivial problem. Yet there has been so much confusion about different levels of standards compliance in browsers already, there is no point in making this business even more difficult by introducing a 3rd rendering mode. With any new release of HTML / XHTML or CSS, we'll have another lot of trouble on the web again when people try to write code that browsers might not yet support correctly. That'll be enough questions arising at that time... For the 2008 or 2009 release of IE 8, let's hope the best for the active, innovative and curious web designers AND the users. Sometimes there must be milestones when software breakes with long-established behaviours. Might be uncomfortable at first, but will serve the world with a more innovative, thin-client product.
Anonymous
February 03, 2008
It's really no fun to switch the <meta> tag in the source code for the purpose of testing. At least, it could be a switch in IE configuration or IE Developer Toolbar to turn the IE8 standard mode on/off.
Anonymous
February 03, 2008
Who cares about the name? Unless you want to confuse people again, just stick to IE8... Hope it is more stable, faster and enables js debugging (until there is some built-in decent solution - read not VS -) FF/firebug will stay th only good options for developers. Hope it does not beak the IE Developer toolbar...
Anonymous
February 03, 2008
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Anonymous
February 03, 2008
I think ie still unknown,lagg, and no better than version 7
Anonymous
February 03, 2008
All pages should be rendered according to the specification if they have doctype. Unknown doctypes should be rendered as XHTML 1.1. No doctype should be rendered as HTML 2.0 You think IE will lose market share because of this? Well it won't, if IE 8 becomes piority update (Like WGA). Also IE should come 'loose' of Windows, and has its own copy of dlls needed, so it supports Windows XP, 2000 and Vista in one package. All files should be installed into the Internet Explorer folder (no more ieframe.dll in system32 folder). You might try to re-support older versions of Windows to gain even more (many still use 98SE and NT 4, forget ME and 95). Skinning / Theme support! You should add a rendering side-menu (in 'favourites center') with the following options for users (so they just stop compaining and start tweaking it themselves) |-Margins and Padding----------------------------------------------------| |[ ] IE Style | |[X] DOM Style | || |--Width and Height -------------------------------------------------------| | | | |- When the table cells' width/height is too big--------------------------------| | | |[ ] Divide the extra width/height and remove from each cell | | | |[ ] Divide the extra width/height and remove from cells with a fixed width/height | | | |[ ] Divide the extra width/height and remove from cells with a percentage width/height | | | |[X] Expand the table | | | || | | | | |- When the table cells' width/height is too small------------------------------| | | |[X] Divide the extra width/height and add to each cell | | | |[ ] Divide the extra width/height and add to cells with a fixed width/height | | | |[ ] Divide the extra width/height and add to cells with a percentage width/height | | | |[ ] Shrink the table | | | || | | | | |-What defines width/height----------------------------------------------| | | |[ ] Include border, padding and content (IE Quirks Mode) | | | |[ ] Include padding and content (Mozilla Quirks Mode) | | | |[X] Just content (DOM Style) | | | || | | | |[ ] Allow height attitrubes for tables | || |--Content Overflow -------------------------------------------------------| |[ ] Allow content to overflow (DOM Style) | |[ ] Expand box when overflow (IE Quirks Mode) | || |--JScript GetElement-------------------------------------------------------| |[ ] Allow document.all | |[ ] Allow getting ID as if it was a variable | |[ ] Allow document.layers[] | |[ ] Allow getElementById() | || |--JScript GetAttitrube------------------------------------------------------| |[X] Force use of getAttitrube() method (DOM Style) | |[ ] Allow calling attitrube as if it was a child function (IE Quirks Mode) | || |--Navigator Variables-----------------------------------------------------| |[X] Replace Mozilla/4.0 with IE/8 | |[X] Allow cookieenabled detection | |[X] Allow object avalibility detection | || |--Image Rendering--------------------------------------------------------| |[X] Render PNGs' Alpha Channel | |[ ] Don't render PNGs with Alpha Channel transparent | |______|

There is a problem in IE 7 script rendering (script below, double spaced here to prevent loading) ---------------------Code 1 ----------------------- < s c r i p t t y p e = " t e x t / j a v a s c r i p t " > i f ( n a v i g a t o r . a p p N a m e = = ' M i c r o s o f t I n t e r n e t E x p l o r e r ' ) { f u n c t i o n k ( ) { d o c u m e n t . w r i t e ( ' s u p p o r t a l l m e t h o d ' ) ; } } e l s e { f u n c t i o n k ( ) { d o c u m e n t . w r i t e ( ' n o t s u p p o r t a l l m e t h o d ' ) ; } } k(); < / s c r i p t > -----------------------Result of 1 ---------------------- I get [notsupportallmethod] in both Firefox and IE. ---------------------Code 2 ----------------------- < s c r i p t t y p e = " t e x t / j a v a s c r i p t " > i f ( n a v i g a t o r . a p p N a m e = = ' N e t s c a p e ' ) { f u n c t i o n k ( ) { d o c u m e n t . w r i t e ( 'n o s u p p o r t a l l m e t h o d ' ) ; } } e l s e { f u n c t i o n k ( ) { d o c u m e n t . w r i t e ( ' s u p p o r t a l l m e t h o d ' ) ; } } k(); < / s c r i p t > -----------------------Result of 2---------------------- I get [notsupportallmethod] in Firefox and [supportallmethod] in IE. ---------------------Code 3 ----------------------- < s c r i p t t y p e = " t e x t / j a v a s c r i p t " > v a r i = ' b ' i f ( n a v i g a t o r . a p p N a m e = = ' N o s u c h b r o w s e r' ) { f u n c t i o n k ( ) { d o c u m e n t . w r i t e ( 'n o s u p p o r t a l l m e t h o d ' ) ; } } e l s e i f ( i = ' a ' ) { f u n c t i o n k ( ) { d o c u m e n t . w r i t e ( ' s u p p o r t a l l m e t h o d ' ) ; } } else { document.write('Expected'); k(); < / s c r i p t > -----------------------Result of 3---------------------- I get [Expected] in Firefox and [supportallmethod] in IE.

It seems IE loads all the functions first no matter what, then execute the commands. Firefox seems to read the javascript, and loads the function only when the if statement is true. I could prevent this if I used:  (detect IE and pasess validation)  (detect certain builds of mozilla and passes the validation) <![if !IE]> <![endif]> (detect all builds of mozilla, but does not pass validation)

Anonymous
February 04, 2008
I really hope it will work out, because getting websites looking the same in FF and IE can really be difficult (for me). I always have trouble with the margin and padding attributes..
Anonymous
February 04, 2008
I wish this wasn't needed, but backward compatibility is important and it does seem like the best solution with that in mind. I'm curious why a whole working group was needed to come up with such an obvious solution though!
Anonymous
February 04, 2008
I give up - it is too hard to test IE8 without any help (IE developer toolbar on/off mode)
Anonymous
February 04, 2008
Für alle Webentwickler dürften die zwei folgenden Blog-Posts interessant sein: Compatibility
Anonymous
February 05, 2008
I'm pretty disappointed, maybe even a bit angry, at the direction the Internet Explorer team has
Anonymous
February 10, 2008
I've watched the debate with interest but not posted anything until now. The news of Internet Explorer
Anonymous
February 10, 2008
Back in 2006 support for many of the more advanced selectors were still very limited. Most browsers did not support the new selectors introduced by CSS level 3 at all and even support for the selectors...
Anonymous
February 12, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 12, 2008
Dean Edwards在其新一篇blog上引用了针对IE8的version targeting特性的一些言论。
Anonymous
February 12, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 14, 2008
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Anonymous
February 14, 2008
Quirks mode is waste in my opinion.
Anonymous
February 15, 2008
What happens if we've used conditional comments to target everything below IE 8 (), [incorrectly] assuming that IE will actually support standards by version 8? If we don't insert the <meta> tag, will it default to IE 7's rendering, AND ignore the conditional comments for IE 7 (thus breaking the layout?)
Anonymous
February 15, 2008
We have to move on, let the broken stuff stay broken. Take a cue from Vista and Mac OS X. Let users install a "backward-compatible" plug-in if they choose to remain in the dark ages.
Anonymous
February 16, 2008
If I never veiw a backwards compatibility page! Then it is safe to say i will not need the backwards compatibility mode. For the ones who will a plugin should be an option. I feel it is unfair for Microsoft to say what is and what is not needed. The user should have that option. However I feel it is also important to move forward. The only way to do that is for IE8 to stand alone with IE7, IE6 ,IE5 Plugins. After all IE8 will not be at the top forever. Backwards compatibility will be needed for IE8 in the future. I vote that All pages will be tagged in the future for Browsers to know how to show them.
Anonymous
February 17, 2008
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Anonymous
February 17, 2008
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Anonymous
February 17, 2008
Leaving it on IE8 'super standard mode' should be the preferred way to go, for reasons of future development (having an extra META tag is like extra baggage). An alternative suggestion instead of the opt-in meta would be to let the browser 'detect' if it thinks the pages were written for IE7 and below. If so, display some prompt asking if the user wants to switch to IE7 mode. An opt-in list would be maintained of all the sites that are to revert to IE7 mode on each computer (though this could be controlled by some company-wide policy) IE8 'super standard' would be the default render mode.
Anonymous
February 17, 2008
Absolutely the worst idea I have ever read. Anyone with half a brain & some web design knowledge should be able to see what is wrong with this. "Why can't your browser be just like Firefox?" I actually like Konqueror as well as Firefox. And Epiphany + WebKit looks nice. Just anything but IE. I actually find Links (links.sf.net) a better browser!
Anonymous
February 18, 2008
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Anonymous
February 18, 2008
I wish Microsoft would make upgrading IE to the latest version mandatory, or at least, like Firefox and most others, encourage people to upgrade. I was shocked to see that IE7 wasn't part of any windows update packages. At least then we would worry less about old versions and move on to better things. IE8 should be in super-standards mode anyway, and revert back for quirks mode. Anything written years ago should have been revisited by now anyway, and if they don't want to update their sites to web standards that's their problem.
Anonymous
February 19, 2008
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Anonymous
February 19, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
February 19, 2008
Executive summary: IE8 will rendering will be identical to IE7. Conclusion: IE8 can not pass Acid2. Comment: You need to retract the statement about passing Acid2 as it was premature. Better luck with IE9.
Anonymous
February 20, 2008
Microsoft broke the web long time ago. They want to keep it broken. Stop the stupid and pathetic excuses. They want to replace HTML with MSHTML.
Anonymous
February 20, 2008
Microsoft should quit the browser war. Their software is a complete mess. They should leave the browsers to Firefox and Safari. Why do you have to debug our sites in IE 5, 6, 7 and now 8. Every minute spent on IE is time wasted.
Anonymous
February 20, 2008
So I assume if we are 3rd-party content vendors that work across many top-100 sites, we'll need to read for the Meta tag in the page to determine whether or not we should work around IE browser bugs when doing dynamic positioning?
Anonymous
February 20, 2008
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Anonymous
February 20, 2008
... I meant: I think Microsoft should give the sites 1 release (until IE9) to work with the Meta tags and after which should require a Meta tag to use IE7-compatibility mode.
Anonymous
February 20, 2008
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Anonymous
March 03, 2008
Microsoft hat sich vor der Veröffentlichung einer Beta-Version des kommenden Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) nun doch (einigermaßen überraschend) dazu entschlossen, die ggü. IE6 und IE7 standardkompatiblere Darstellung von Webinhalten nicht von einem entsprech
Anonymous
March 04, 2008
Just to let you guys know… Dean Hachamovitch, general manager for the IE team, just announced that IE8
Anonymous
March 04, 2008
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Anonymous
March 06, 2008
During my talk at MIX 08, I covered more background and detail behind the new IE8 layout mode that provides
Anonymous
March 14, 2008
I somehow missed Microsoft's announcement that (in a complete U-turn from previous announcements) IE8 will support web standards mode by default, and thus any broken sites will have to enable IE7 mode by a meta tag. So finally, IE will cease to be the
Anonymous
March 19, 2008
You’re about to see the mother of all flamewars on internet groups where web developers hang out. It
Anonymous
April 16, 2008
IE8 - A Step Forward, A Step Back
Anonymous
April 22, 2008
Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) and compatibility
Anonymous
April 30, 2008
re: IE8 での default Web 標準準拠に反対
Anonymous
July 24, 2008
Winfuture.de Scheinbar ist geplant, dass der IE 8 früher veröffentlich wird als erwartet und da bekanntlicherweise der IE 8 die Webseiten anders korrekt rendern wird, werden einige Webmaster sich etwas erschrecken. Dazu noch folgende Links: Warum
Anonymous
August 28, 2008
How to make my web pages Internet Explorer 8 compatible
Anonymous
September 01, 2008
So instead of standards-compliant websites needing to include an extra <meta> tag to tell IE 8 to render in standards mode, they now need to include an extra <meta> tag to tell IE 8 not to show a "please break my website" button in the chrome.
Anonymous
January 06, 2009
We believe IE8 helps make browsing the web faster, easier, safer and more reliable. To help our users
Anonymous
January 07, 2009
We believe IE8 helps make browsing the web faster, easier, safer and more reliable. To help our users
Anonymous
January 07, 2009
We believe IE8 helps make browsing the web faster, easier, safer and more reliable. To help our users

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