131 Prefer a cultural switch

I understand the need for a rendering switch for IE. I prefer that the switch be a cultural version instead of a product version.

I wrote up an alternative switch, X-Web-Epoch, here:

http://tagneto.blogspot.com/2008/01/x-web-epoch-instead-of-x-ua-compatible.html

posted at 03:04 pm on January 23, 2008 by James Burke

132 Reverse it!

The people who needs a switch are the ones targetting a given version of Trident, not everyone else. Make the switch inverse of how it is proposed, and everything should be fine.

posted at 03:22 pm on January 23, 2008 by Asbjørn Ulsberg

133 A mess

It’s truly amazing that the inner circle of Alistapart actually supports this scheme which is as unfriendly to standards as it gets. Alistapart has always championed the eternal, the beautiful in HTML documents. And now you want us to contaminate our documents with vendor-specific version numbers from Microsoft? The leaders of WaSP had to backpedal to distance themselves from the mess yesterday. I hope Alistapart will do the same when they get out of the dizziness the NDA must have caused.

posted at 03:26 pm on January 23, 2008 by John Phellis

134 Let's not panic, but think

The fuss seems like a huge storm and people should me think it over for some time. Wait until after the weekend.

I have summed it up in short on my blog and at this moment I think that there will be very limited occasions where I would want to use the X-UA-Compatible meta tag. It also feels a bit too non-standard, too alien. In some very special situations one would want to use, but these will be extremely rare. As far as I can see now.

Let’s get back to the work that’s in my to do list.

posted at 03:32 pm on January 23, 2008 by Rob Hofker

135 Arm Twisting as "Innovation"

Specifying a browser has no advantage at all except Microsoft’s domination agenda. Developers should detect available technologies. IE 8 ought to render well in all modes not just in special modes. The doctype system is fine. That way if a browser has a mode that supports the doctype better then it can be in that mode or can render as well as it can otherwise. Stamping a freshness date on a site is a horrible idea. Detecting for technology means all browsers that support that technology (in one way or another) will work with a site. More openness is better for users, more exclusivity is better for companies like Microsoft. If only their agenda were to make the best tools and earn our love and respect, It is not…It is to leverage a position of dominance and control over the market by promoting dubious weapons and calling them “innovation”. Watch out!

posted at 04:14 pm on January 23, 2008 by Paul Luscher

136 Agree (again)

I do agree mostly with Joey Smith as in Post 108. Targeting a specific client version is a bad idea. Targeting “features” is better. Still bettre would be targeting some standard instead. Just add a version info to the content style type and content type and create special versions of that for IE. That would eliminate the need of endless feature lists and just name them all in one single version statement.

And, of course, the standards compliant mode should be the default.

posted at 04:25 pm on January 23, 2008 by Siegfried Gipp

137 Please no

This is going to make future browser development horribly difficult and further segment the market. It’ll convince more lazy designers that they are justified in developing their site to work on only one browser. There are very few cases when that makes sense and that’s usually when they have complete control over the browsers they use on-site. Screwing up the rest of the web for people have have control over their environment seems shortsighted.

Now sure, you could just shrug it off and say that since IE6’s inaccuracies were well-documented, these developers should have known better, but you would be ignoring the fact that many developers never explicitly opted into “standards mode,� or even knew that such a mode existed.

Oh boo hoo! The designers got what they deserve. If it broke in IE7 and they were unaware of the fundamentals of the very medium in which they work, then I have no sympathy.

This feels like a sell-out by ALA.

posted at 04:35 pm on January 23, 2008 by Aaron Farr

138 Untitled

Sorry but this seems utterly ridiculous…

Hopefully something will change before all this materialises

posted at 04:56 pm on January 23, 2008 by Matt B

139 Hmmm

I think it’s clear that as far as standards based web dev is concerned then this move by MS is just ridiculous and only serves to save themselves… To see the support from ALA is the worst bit though…

posted at 05:25 pm on January 23, 2008 by t itan

140 undecided

I’m not real sure about this quite yet. What’s going to happen to the old sites we have? Will it default to “edge”? That could be pretty bad.

I’m unclear on why Microsoft feels like they need to re-invent to wheel when they release a browser (using Trident and now a new rendering engine). Why don’t they just use Gecko or Webkit to really create some consistency across browsers. Maybe they have a financial obligation to fight open source with every fiber of their being… I don’t know. Seems a bit ridiculous to me – but the almighty dollar tends to rule.

posted at 05:32 pm on January 23, 2008 by Tim Wright

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