Microsoft is moving all their proprietary CSS extensions to the -ms- namespace for IE8. Glad to hear it! Visit site »
Chris Wilson and his team at Microsoft release a “readiness toolkit,” for IE 8, which includes (among other things), a beta of the application and a new debugging tool long the lines of Firebug. Nice.
As of today, the Web Standards movement is over. We won. Visit site »
“We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can.”
So there you have it. This should make a lot of standards-oriented developers happy, as it makes out jobs easier. I think this is the right move by Microsoft, although I never could quite figure out very firmly where I stood on the whole topic. At the very least, it prove MS is listening to the developers, and that can only be a good thing. Visit site »
Eric shares a story about a time in his days at Mozilla when they were faced with a similar situation to that which led Microsoft towards version targeting.
I feel sorry for the guys on the IE team. Having talked to a few of them personally about this, I know they’re smart people who want to do the right thing for the web. But the right thing, for Microsoft, is not necessarily the same as the right thing for the web. They’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, and they’re trying to make the best of it. Debate the pros and cons of Microsoft’s version targeting proposal all you want, but do keep in mind that these are genuinely good people, working hard at bringing IE up-to-par with web standards (no easy task, as far behind as it had gotten). They’re not the evil Microsoft borg — they’re regular people. They’re doing the best they can in a no-win situation — give them a bit of a break. Visit site »
James Bennett talks again about X-UA-Compatible (Microsoft’s IE8 version targeting mechanisim). This one is funny, and probably accurate — but it still doesn’t make me get that up in arms over the fact that I have to add a meta tag to my documents. Even if I have to do something similar again in a few years with MS releases IE9, I’m not that upset about it. Why? One, because getting up set isn’t going to change anything, and two, because in the time it takes people to write ALA articles about this stuff, I could re-jigger 150 sites for IE8 and move on with my life. To put it bluntly: I disagree with with MS is doing, here, but not passionately enough for me to spend a lot of time fretting over it. Visit site »
“The strong have always been tasked with carrying the weak. In the case of the ongoing X-UA-Compatible bluster, the strong are the savvy standardistas. The burden? A single meta tag or http header. Can we move on now?”
Exactly the point I’ve been trying to make about this, only said about 100 times more elegantly and succinctly. Well-put, Shaun. Visit site »
Jeremy and Jeffrey have a bit of a shoot-out regarding the IE version targeting mechanism in the latest ALA. For what it’s worth, I come drown more on Jeremy’s side of this one — the version targeting was a good idea; defaulting to the IE7 rendering engine was not. But, I also think this is ultimately not that big a deal. All we have to do is add a single meta tag to our documents, and all is well. No, we shouldn’t have to, but we do, and it will take us no time at all to do it. I just don’t see this as the end of the world. The only part I disagree with Jeremy on is that MS’s plan is “doomed to fail.” It’s not. Yes, people will object to adding the meta tag, but they’ll do it anyway, because the alternative is writing pages for the IE7 rendering engine. Visit site »
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. Visit site »
Wow, very nice. This is impressive. It also makes Opera look very, very silly. So now that all the majors can claim reasonable standard compliancy, can we please get those browser wars started again? :)
Congrats, IE8 team! Visit site »
Kudos to Molly for being willing to ask Bill Gates tough questions straight to his face. Personally, I’m less interested in what MS is doing with regards to standards support in IE8 and more interested in what they’re doing to improve adoption rate of their newer browsers (like IE7 now, and IE8 when it’s available). Visit site »