Reversing an earlier decision that would have made its next Web browser less compatible with existing Web standards, Microsoft yesterday announced that Internet Explorer (IE) 8 will use standards-based rendering by default. The announcement comes on the eve of MIX'08, Microsoft's Web development conference, held this week in Las Vegas.
"IE 8 has been significantly enhanced, and was designed with great support for current Internet standards," says Microsoft Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie. "Our initial plan had been to use IE 7-compatible behavior as the default setting for IE 8, to minimize potential impact on the world's existing Web sites. We have now decided to make our most current standards-based mode the default in IE 8."
The move should cheer proponents of Web standards who had complained about Microsoft's original plan for IE 8, which will support three Web page rendering modes. The first, called Quirks mode, is designed for compatibility with older Web sites that were made with IE 6 or older IE versions in mind. The second, IE 7 mode, will render Web pages identically to IE 7, the current version of the browser. The third mode, now the default, will more closely adhere to existing Web standards, as do competing browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari.
This is no small change for Microsoft, which has always valued backwards compatibility over forward-leaning technologies. On the other hand, this decision may also remove some legal questions hanging over the company, including an EU antitrust investigation into Microsoft's decision to bundle IE with its dominant Windows products. If IE 8 renders Web sites according to Web standards by default, the company's competitors can't complain that the browser was designed to lock-in customers.
Reader Comments
I can't tell you how happy this makes me as a web developer!! :D
Cfischer83 -March 03, 2008
ok, who saw this coming?
*raises hand*
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Waethorn -March 04, 2008
Best news I've heard all week. Unfortunately for the time being websites will still need to be designed with hacks in mind for IE 6 and 7, but at least we can slowly get rid of the separate hack sheet for them and finally have one CSS page for all browsers.
freakyfelt -March 04, 2008
This, combined with the earlier news that IE8 passed the Acid2 test, is great news...for everyone. Even if you don't develop for the web, most of the web browsers being this compliant (FF isn't there yet, though FF3 will be) means a better-looking (uniform) and technically slightly faster internet, as miscellaneous codes for different browsers won't have to be developed.
It's even got a side benefit of 'dating' websites with old information - it'll be painfully obvious, visually, when you visit a website designed for older browsers and they render poorly. o_O :-)
james3mg -March 04, 2008
Oops...sorry for the HTML in my last post-guess it's obvious when someone posts for the first time, huh?
james3mg -March 04, 2008
OMG ... I feel the urge to do a somersault. I positively giddy about this announcement.
No, really.
mwrisner -March 04, 2008
What Microsoft really needs to do is, in addition to their currently broken rendering/JS engine, use an open source rendering/JS engine, like the Mozilla one or WebKit.
felipe_alfaro,felipe_alfaro -March 04, 2008
"in addition to their currently broken rendering/JS engine, use an open source rendering/JS engine, like the Mozilla one or WebKit"
ya you know, when their "broken" rendering engine is used to render almost all of the interwebs, they should downgrade it to something that's even less "standards"-friendly....[sic]
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Waethorn -March 04, 2008
If Ray Ozzie made this happen, and if Ray ends up running Microsoft, I might respect that company again.
The better question is how could anyone at Microsoft have thought that non-standard rendering by default was a GOOD idea?
twitch -March 05, 2008
"The better question is how could anyone at Microsoft have thought that non-standard rendering by default was a GOOD idea?"
easy - the same people that cherish prior customers made the initial decision.
Paul said it best when he said: "This is no small change for Microsoft, which has always valued backwards compatibility over forward-leaning technologies."
i'm sure the Windows client team would love to just scrap all support for legacy code and start from scratch with a brand new all-64-bit code based on only newer technologies (VT-enabled kernel, UEFI, PCIe-only, etc., not to mention support for legacy x86 opcodes), but in the real world, that just ain't gonna happen. sorry.
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