1 Well..

I feel your pain on principle, but the reality of the matter is that I’m already using conditional comments to target for both IE 6 and IE7. You say the team is staffed by standards savvy people, but their product doesn’t reflect that. Z-indexing on positioned elements, float issues, filters, and non-css stuff like dynamically adding options to select elements via innerHTML, the list goes on. How about adding support for xhtml mime type? Heh. What’s one more inclusion of IE browser version targeting?

posted at 06:17 am on February 19, 2008 by Bjorn Tipling

2 Untitled

As there are thousands of websites out there tweaked to look in a specific way with a specific browser the default behaviour of IE8 saves as a big time saver for all the website authors. Those who want to implement their websites for IE8 will have to do some changes and testing anyway. So I don’t think it’s too bad to add this extra line.

The only problem I see that this solution is not “beautyful” in the eyes of a techie. Well, but it’s pragmatic.

posted at 06:19 am on February 19, 2008 by Andreas Berg

3 The best solution

I agree that this is a doomed solution. I outlined a better one—simply release stand-alone versions of IE6, IE7, etc that will run on XP and Vista. If you intranet needs IE6, you have it. (Plus, nobody has to run a VM just to test on IE6)

posted at 06:35 am on February 19, 2008 by Will Oller

4 I almost forgot

I got most of the idea from Ethan Marcotte ... Credit where it’s due!!!

posted at 06:38 am on February 19, 2008 by Will Oller

5 Web Stagnation

The idea that IE may ‘freeze the web’ without developer intervention, from version 8 onwards (IE8, IE9, IE10, etc), is ugly and a massive disappointment. Particularly when a similar solution would be quite elegant (opting into backwards compatibility, as opposed to opting out of it).

I don’t understand why some people seem happily resigned to deal with specific versions of a browser for the rest of their careers. Just because that’s the case now (with conditional comments, etc), does not mean it should be the case moving forward.

I see the irony: it’s one small line—what’s the harm? However, this one small line challenges the evolution of the web and promotes web stagnation (in one browser).

{sigh}

posted at 07:06 am on February 19, 2008 by Adam Schilling

6 leave them behind

choose your choice and choose your side.

posted at 07:12 am on February 19, 2008 by Antha Anthawonksa

7 Agree but...

As much as I agree with your conclusions, I’m not sure about one assertion:

If IE8 is going to differentiate itself from its predecessor by having better standards support, then surely we can assess how it will render websites by simply viewing those websites in a standards-compliant browser like, say, Firefox, Safari or Opera.

Surely most sites that will break are those that have ‘if IE…’ logic trying to cater for broken behaviour in IE 6 and 7? Those sites will still render correctly in a standards compliant browser, but (presumably) not in IE8, unless they’re specifically targetting older versions separately, with no catch-all ‘other IE’ case.

posted at 08:52 am on February 19, 2008 by Kerry Buckley

8 Good Analogy?

Imagine a new version of Word that behaves exactly like the old version of Word unless the document it is processing contains a hidden instruction to unlock any new features.

Is this really the case? Surely it would be more akin to a new version of Word displaying the old document how it was supposed to look; which seems to me precisely the behaviour you would want. If every time I opened a Word ‘97 file in Office 2008 it looked completely different to how it originally looked I’d get a bit annoyed.

posted at 08:58 am on February 19, 2008 by Mark Wales

9 Still not decided

Having had a month, pretty much, to think about this issue, I’m still no closer to coming to a firm conclusion – but my gut says that the proposed default is the best possible option.

1. It allows intranets, mission-critical sites such as online banking, un-maintained Geocities sites, and cat diaries to continue to render as correctly as they do now, by simulating the IE7 rendering engine. (Or IE6, if that is their baseline and they choose to add the meta tag.)

2. It allows standards-aware developers who fixed their sites when IE7 was released to do nothing and be confident that their clients’ sites will not break. If you sold your services as being futureproof, this is a big win.

3. It allows standards-aware developers to use edge targeting (or the HTML5 DOCTYPE, or some other setting) to be able to create sites that take advantage of the advances present in IE8 (and FF3 et al), further setting ourselves apart from the hacks.

That all makes sense to me. Where I have doubts are around the accessibility issues (as documented by Bruce Lawson); JavaScript compatibility issues, including across frames, as pointed out by several people; and, most importantly, Microsoft’s ability to release pitch-perfect backwards-compatible rendering engines that don’t introduce new errors on top of the ones they are trying to reproduce.

posted at 09:10 am on February 19, 2008 by Matthew Pennell

10 Do it like the automobile industry

I don’t see the purpose of new web browsers, if people can decide to display their sites the way former versions do. I don’t doubt, that standards savvy people are working for Microsoft. That’s why I suspect another reason behind Microsoft’s plan. C’mon Billy boy, do it like the automobile industry! Buy your engine from a competitor and paint it microsoft.

posted at 10:16 am on February 19, 2008 by Richard Papp