Compatibility and IE 8, Again
Jens O. Meiert, March 4, 2008 / February 6, 2012.
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
IE 8 will show pages requesting “Standards” mode in IE 8’s Standards mode. Developers who want their pages shown using IE 8’s “IE 7 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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Comments
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On March 4, 2008, 14:40 CET, Keegan said:
Finally. That is really good news!
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On March 4, 2008, 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, 2008, 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, 2008, 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, 2008, 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.