Compatibility and IE 8, Again
Jens Meiert, March 4, 2008.
This entry is filed under Web Development.
After massive, legitimate criticism and concerns, there is a happy end: Microsoft decided against the opt-in to the browser version I tested with
strategy and had Dean Hachamovitch announce that
IE8 will show pages requesting “Standards” mode in IE8’s Standards mode. Developers who want their pages shown using IE8’s “IE7 Standards mode” will need to request that explicitly (using the HTTP header or
metaelement approach[…]).
So in absence of the X-UA-Compatible meta element or HTTP header, IE 8 and future versions will not be expected to behave like IE 7 anymore – as if that didn’t already sound wrong and weird.
Anyway, as I didn’t go into much detail before I don’t do now, either, as many other people already provide a lot of great coverage beyond links, like A List Apart with two nice follow-ups on the X-UA-Compatible discussion as well as Molly, Robert, Roger, and Co. on current news. I rather recommend to focus on the bright side now, awaiting a neat new Internet Explorer version that really passes Acid2 – presumably.
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Enjoy some popular posts, probably including contemporaries:
Comments
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On March 4, 14:40 CET, Keegan said:
Finally. That is really good news!
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On March 4, 20:41 CET, Steven W. said:
But it made sense what Zeldman wrote in his ALA article: “Microsoft cannot abandon these web builders, nor can it hold itself blameless for their platform- rather than standards-based approach. After all, during the bad old days, companies like Microsoft and Netscape helped create ill-informed web developers …”
That will have been a good reason for Microsofts first proposal.
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On March 6, 14:08 CET, Robert said:
So while everybody else is talking about the progress in markup conformance IE8 is bringing to our table, and the infamous ACID2 compliance is getting piles of attention: Compare this to the downright greatness of having a chest of real debugging tools right inside the browser.
As Joe Hewitt put it:
I couldn’t be happier that Microsoft completely copied Firebug for IE8.
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On March 7, 14:54 CET, Jens Meiert said:
Keegan, it is
Steven, right, and one almost believed that this was the only way to go (for Microsoft) …
Robert, though I can’t tell if Joe means it seriously or with quite some irony?
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On March 8, 9:33 CET, Robert said:
Of course, Joe spreads a little bit of irony - it might be embarassing that your pro-bono work is repurposed by the “dark side”. But I think it’s flattering, though.
For us developers who will have to deal with cross-browser issues for still several years to come, this is definitely good news. Ad hoc JS debugging never was a piece of cake with MS Script Debugger or MS Web Expression.
