Linked by Kroc on Wed 5th Mar 2008 19:02 UTC
Microsoft decided that due to their new interoperability initiative, they would reverse a previous decision to make IE8 default to the IE7 engine, instead of supporting standards-compliance by default. No article or musing I have yet read has delved into what is increasingly likely, the reason for this sudden change in decision -- and that is this: the mobile web is coming.
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RE[3]: enterprise web-apps
by snozzberry on Wed 5th Mar 2008 21:45
in reply to "RE[2]: enterprise web-apps"
Member since:2005-11-14
Evidenced by it passing the ACID2 test which in itself requires extensive CSS support
More importantly, it requires extensive HTML support. Parts of ACID2 are graphics rendered inline from hex data, something no Microsoft browser has ever (to my knowledge) supported.
Remember that ACID is a measure of error handling as well as feature support. Those of you who remember when Netscape and IE didn't render tables identically can get a better idea of what ACID's reaching for.
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Member since:
2005-11-29
It's entirely needed in this situation.
The Web is broken, Microsoft broke it.
Well not entirely Microsoft, but the events of the first browser wars with the emphasis on features over stability and standards are what brought this on.
Now, this already bad trend was further supplemented by negligence on Microsoft's part to make a standard compliant browser once and for all.
Ideally, the perfect time would of been to make IE7 support as much standards from the get go. They needed to break the Web again, once and for all.
Now they're facing a dilemma: They have to support three rendering mode:
Quirks Mode (IE5/IE6 bugs)
"Standards" Mode (IE7)
Super Standards Mode (IE8)
People have hard coded specific things into web pages (User Agent specific code, browser specific bug work arounds) and expect these things to remain working.
In some cases, the website is not even actively developed anymore.
So Microsoft has the choice of making the IE8 Standards Mode "opt-in" or making the IE7 mode "opt-in"
Consider the following:
IE7 was released a little over a year ago, so websites coded specifically for it will be fresh. Meaning you can assume a great deal will still be actively developed.
Now, by making the IE7 behavior "opt-in" these still actively developed websites would just need to use a simple meta-tag to request the old rendering mode.
Additionally, consider if the reverse were true:
Let's say Microsoft stuck with their previous decision of making the IE8 rendering mode "opt-in".
Now fast forward to IE9, they now have an additional standard to support because people hard coded values to "opt-in" for the support.
With their new decision, they can avoid further driving a wedge between their own products and save themselves a more apparent than ever headache.
So ideally IE8 is going to be a clean slate, and support as much standards as possible (Evidenced by it passing the ACID2 test which in itself requires extensive CSS support)
Additional IE releases would be able to be incremental, not groundbreaking. This seems to fall in place with their statement on wanting to release early, release often.