I’m not sure if you have been following the recent buzz around IE 8, but a little while ago Microsoft announced that the next version of Internet Explorer would include version targeting.
Basically, this means that their next browser wouldn’t render websites in standards mode unless explicitly commanded, so as not to “break” old websites written with poor code. This concept goes against the ideals of Web Standards, which is why a lot of people got worked up over the issue.
Yesterday, however, Microsoft announced this:
We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can. This decision is a change from what we’ve posted previously.
This is great news for IE 8 and Web Standards.
Believe it or not, an announcement from Microsloth stating they’re ignoring the way EVERYONE else does things and doing it their own way doesn’t surprise me. Does it surprise you? Eventually people will realize that IE is not the only browser in town (nor the best), not to mention Windoze is not the only OS (again, nor the best). Until then MS can do whatever they want and the ignorant masses will follow in lock step.
said Mr. I at 3:22 pm on Saturday, March 29
Yes, it’s true, Microsoft can get away with a lot of things due to their size and power that most other companies could not.
The other thing that I hope happens in IE 8 is for the text to be able to be resized when it is set in pixels. This is something that they have purposely (or not) neglected to do in past versions of Internet Explorer which makes it more difficult to create accessible website. You can read what Dan Cederholm (Simplebits) had to say about IE 8.
Even though it seems like the people at Microsoft are trying to make a better browser, I think that they could try much harder.
said Nathaniel Buck at 3:47 pm on Saturday, March 29