1 Other Browser Support

I think this is fabulous idea. One more way to get around buggy implementations. Have you been in contact with other UAs concerning Version Targeting, or only Microsoft?

posted at 08:33 am on January 22, 2008 by BJ Neilsen

2 I have to say... I can't agree.

I understand the need for us a web developers and designers to be able to “set it, and forget it” but I really think that the best option is the one we have now. The one that doesn’t lock us into any given version of a browser and keeps us honest with our code.

I am fearful of the possibility that companies stop thinking about how to offer improved accessibility, usability, and functionality buy building a site that is IE7 compliant and then leaving it for the next 10 years, bugs and all.

The current method almost requires companies to keep up with the times, or at least make an effort to give their users a better web. The web needs to be able to “shed it’s skin” every ten or so years and get rid of some of that old, unmanaged, outdated code.

How many people are going to miss those old Yahoo!Geocities sites anyway?

posted at 09:09 am on January 22, 2008 by Douglas Tondro

3 Worst solution ever

OMG! That’s a terrible solution and impossible to implement. That would mean that if I wanted to create a browser, I would have to emulate the rendering behavior of all other browsers. That’s just so absurd.

Rendering and behavior should be standards based, not browser based.

Microsoft would like that solution because it is anti-competitive and would cause significant problems for the rest of the industry (everyone else would have to attempt to emulate IE 5,6,7,8,N’s rendering behavior as Microsoft are the dominant player). In fact, this solution is even unsustainable for Microsoft because it would make their codebase huge as they keep all their bugs forever in their browsers. Stupid solution. I don’t see it happening.

posted at 09:21 am on January 22, 2008 by Marcos Caceres

4 @Marcos Caceres

I don’t believe this solution would require Firefox to implement an IE rendering model. Since Firefox would be targeted by the FF abbreviation.

I am not convinced about this solution either though. I welcome the attempt to bring some sort of order to all this. However, I can’t see Opera (or whoever) in 5 years time delivering an Opera 15 with 5 different rendering engines for versions from 10 to 14!

In any case this will only work if all browsers agree on this convention and I just can’t see that happening.

posted at 10:33 am on January 22, 2008 by Robin Massart

5 I... I'm not sure

I’m not sure this is a good idea. I find it hard to believe that browsers will render pages correctly in backwards-compatibility modes. Heck, most browsers are inherently buggy and laying bugs on top of other bugs is a recipe for failure.

To handle the past for those browsers we already have IE conditional comments, right?

posted at 10:47 am on January 22, 2008 by Damjan Mozetic

6 Versioning is the opposite of standardisation.

It’s inevitable that standards change, eventually making light switches, office buildings and webpages obsolete. When products in that state still ought to be useful to a broader market, they should be renewed or replaced. so I agree with Douglas Tondro: site owners have to continuously invest in standards compliant web content. They shouldn’t leave that to other parties like their audience or any browser manufacturer.

In a industry that wants to take itself seriously, site managers are responsible for keeping pages up to date and browser manufacturers are responsible for prevailing standards above the little and big innovations they’re longing for. Any mechanism for versioning will be bad for the process of becoming a standard compliant industry.

posted at 11:27 am on January 22, 2008 by Ben Scheffer

7 I'm not convinced

I’m ready to agree with Marcos Caceres, this is really a terrible solution and nothing I would like to see in future browsers. This will only lead to extremely bloated browsers with thousand of render modes and a web full of ugly and unmaintained sites.

posted at 12:08 pm on January 22, 2008 by Martin Odhelius

8 Untitled

There’s a big case of weasel words in this article. While it’s fair to say that IE8 in standards mode renders Acid2 correctly, that’s completely not equivalent to ‘passing Acid2’. Passing Acid2 requires the browser to render http://www.webstandards.org/files/acid2/test.html correctly, and I don’t see any meta tags on there.

posted at 12:27 pm on January 22, 2008 by Robin Whittleton

9 Oh God, Won't Someone Please Think Of The Children

This sounds like the same half-assed approach that lead to the DOCTYPE switch in the first place.

In an environment with a potentially unlimited set of UAs to access pages on the Internet, how can anyone think it’s a good idea to UA hardcode support information into the document?

If you want to render my document, there is a defined set of standards. If you aren’t up to implementing those standards then make your own excuses, don’t expect me to update my document to suit.

Now, I understand that this is a fundamentalist view and in “the real world” there are “allowances” that should be made. But something along the lines of what is being suggested here is just going to make the web less document-centric, and more about the “big” browsers. And here’s a hint – the focus of the web should be the content, not the viewer.

posted at 12:27 pm on January 22, 2008 by Gareth Adams

10 Um...?

So we’re reinventing browser sniffing?
Great, being an opera user, I’m going to be so thrilled with that, when people specify IE8, FF3, and then some lower number for everything else because they can’t be arsed with other browsers. So I get some crappy version when I run Opera? Maybe Opera will have some sense and just ignore it.

Browser sniffing wasn’t good the first time round, many of us spent a lot of time giving people reasons why browser sniffing wasn’t bad, and now here we are, saying it’s the best way forward?

As GarethAdams says, there are potentially an unlimited number of UA’s, what are we going to do about mobile browsers? How about Flock, or other browsers that use the Gecko engine?

This sounds like a complete cave in to MS’ demands, when they should be doing everything possible to bend over backwards to get this stuff right, they got themselves into this position, they need to get themselves out of it, without forcing web developers into bad practices.

posted at 01:21 pm on January 22, 2008 by Adrian Lee