Microsoft Changed It’s Mind on IE 8

by Jonathan Longnecker

Microsoft has listened to the web community and reversed its decision to make IE 8 behave like IE 7 unless specifically told to do so. As I’m sure most of you have heard, there was much debate over this, with some big names in the web community actually backing Microsoft on this one. It never made sense to me, so I’m glad to see common sense won out this time. I just want my time back from all the things I’ve had to “fix” to make display properly in IE 6. You listening, Redmond? Eh, I didn’t think so.

March 04, 2008

Design

Comments

  1. 1

    Ty (tzmedia) - Mar 04, 2008

    Ahhh you’ve waded into the mire of debating MS news then heh?
    Just kidding, I’ve read a few posts already this morning.
    The two most level-headed on the topic were from a pair of jo(h)n’s:
    http://jontangerine.com/log/2008/03/adios-ie8-meta-mayhem
    - and - John Resig linked from Jon Tangerine’s article as well.
    The simple solution of the html 5 doc type tag:
    <!DOCTYPE html>
    I might even be able to remember that one with out resorting to copy/pasting.
    Yes it’s true, I’m not strictly a hand coding type of guy, I blaze away with a WYSIWYG editor in split-code view mode.

  2. 2

    tzmedia - Mar 05, 2008

    IE8 beta 1 ready for download:
    http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/
    Available for download, I’m not eating it.
    Let’s get Mikey he’ll eat anything.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYEXzx-TINc
    Good luck Mikey!

  3. 3

    Jason - Mar 05, 2008

    Until people actually migrate to ie7 I’m not sure why we’re really concerned with ie8. As I see it, as long as it supports web standards and improves on ie7’s decent job of being consistent with other browsers we’ll be in better shape than we are now.

  4. 4

    Kevin - Mar 16, 2008

    We’ve already noticed that IE8 doesn’t like some common javascript and markup. Perhaps this is because it is a beta, but I was still shocked.

  5. {screen_name}

    Jonathan Longnecker - Mar 17, 2008

    @Kevin: Wow, are you serious? I don’t understand why Microsoft continues to make our lives significantly more complicated as web developers. Grr smile

  6. 6

    Josh - Mar 17, 2008

    I agree with Jason actually. There is still a large demographic using IE6 (many corporate IT departments stopped the automatic update to IE7 to thwart any ill effects it may have on their infrastructures). Only until we really don’t have to worry about users on 800x600 and IE6 will we begin to advance forward.

    Sadly, the push for web standards isn’t always met with warm praise as many corporations feel it to be an “unnecessary expense”. “The site works doesn’t it? ... Well, that’s all we care about then.” It is great that the IE developers seemed to listen to the cries from the web design community. Extra points for that I guess. </rant>

  7. {screen_name}

    Jonathan Longnecker - Mar 18, 2008

    Yeah, I don’t plan on losing my IE 6 install anytime soon. I hope it takes them a while before IE 8 comes out cause I don’t want to have to test on 3 versions of IE! Holy crap that would be a nightmare.

  8. 8

    jared - May 01, 2008

    I agree with Jonathan. 3 versions is to much. I’m use IE 6 and don’t wanna change it.

  9. 9

    CasCad - May 12, 2008

    Im using IE8 beta 1..without any problem

  10. 10

    San Antonio Lawyer - Sep 09, 2008

    Well, I’m satisfied with IE7, it has everything I need so far, though its good to check on some other options.

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