For anyone trying to make sense out of the whole IE8 X-UA-Compatible nonsense, James Bennet's explanation is almost certainly the most well-thought out and easy-to-understand one you're going to find. I now have an opinion on this matter. I'm with James: X-No-Thanks.
But even though I have an opinion, it’s not a very strong one. Why? Because, quite frankly, I’m just not that interested. If X-UA-Compatible lands in IE8, I'll suck it up and spend 20 minutes putting the tag in all my sites, toss a few more curse words Microsoft's way, and move the fuck on. Ultimately, for those of us doing standards-based work, this isn't that big a deal. If we're doing things right, and this actually happens, it means we have to put one measly meta tag in our code form now on. Big f’ing deal.
Here’s hoping it doesn’t ever happen, though.
001 // Keri Henare // 01.29.2008 // 7:20 AM
I agree 100% with James.
I think that this is where I’ve gotten with the whole
X-UA-Compatibleissue myself. What is going to happen is going to happen. As is typical with Microsoft, we will learn how to deal with the problems, spend extra time fixing them and then complain like old ladies.002 // Patrick Taylor // 01.31.2008 // 6:23 PM
You probably already know this but, if you’re able to set http headers on your server (through .htaccess, httpd.conf or using a scripting language) , you can just add an X-UA-Compatible http header rather than modifying the source.