IE8 Will Be Standards-Compliant By Default

A number of readers wrote in to make sure we know about Microsoft's change of heart regarding IE8. The new version of the dominant browser will render in full standards mode by default. Developers wishing to use quirks mode for IE6- and IE7-compatible rendering will have to opt in explicitly. We've previously discussed IE8's render mode a few times. Perhaps Opera's complaint to the EU or the EU's record antitrust fine had something to do with Redmond's about-face.

Windows Versions?

[Sponge Bath]

Will this be installable on XP and later or will it only be available for the Vista follow on: Vista ME?

Hmmmm

[Brian Gordon]

This could actually be some competition for the unstoppable Firefox.. if IE stops sucking then nobody will switch.. I'm expecting firefox 3 to pack some serious performance and standards-compliance improvements, but if it didn't then I'd have been happy to switch back to IE8. Firefox is an absolute memory whore. I do like the interface though; IE7's was horrid.

Re:Not that I use it but...

[The Ancients]

According to various articles linked to from google [google.com], IE8 beta builds have passed Acid2. As for Acid3, let's start with small miracles, shall we?

Booga booga

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Want to get people to switch to Firefox?

Tell them that IE leaks passwords and will run scripts that can read your hard drive and send credit card numbers to malicious servers.

Tell them that FireFox has the "Do Everything" feature too, but it is disabled by default. It can be turned on later, though "in your experience, you've never had any trouble with it off."

Tell them that FireFox is free and is based on Netscape (they will probably remember that name) which turned the browser business over to "Mozilla" when it went out of business. "Mozilla" makes money fixing security holes in FireFox, which is why it is so secure.

Then install it for them.

This Will Cost MS Dearly

[rsmith-mac]

While this is good news for those of us in the geek crowd, I'm extremely surprised MS went this route. When IE8 is pushed out and it breaks a bunch of non-conforming non-tagged pages built for IE7 and IE6, there will be much hell raising to be had. MS will of course be blamed since they're the ones that changed things and I wouldn't be surprised if the backlash was well in excess of IE7's, if not close to the kind of backlash Vista initially got.

Ultimately everything will be worked out as developers fix their pages, but in the short-term period following IE8's release it's going to cost MS dearly. I can't for the life of me figure out why MS would want to put their neck on the line like this, it's not doing them any favors and "benevolent" usually isn't a term we use to describe Microsoft.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[jweller]

I have to use IE to access my companies payroll site, so if I want to get paid, I must use IE. It's one thing to vote with your wallet but I am not a martyr.

Re:Hmmmm

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Competition is good.

Competition is good, when it is fair competition in a healthy market.

If Microsoft actually goes and creates a superior product then IE users get a better browser which forces Firefox to either "up it's game" (giving FF users an even better browser) or remain the same while everyone switches back to IE because it's superior.

The problem is, what if IE isn't better or what if IE 8 is better but IE 9 is worse? In the first case most people still use IE even though it is inferior, because they assume a normal free market is operating and if there was a better browser Dell or Gateway or Sony would put it on their computer for them. Worse yet, every time a person buys a new computer (every few years) the whole thing is reset and MS gets another shot at being "good enough" that people don't go out of their way to get something better. So if any version of IE is better, more people end up using it than its merits would win in a normal, free market. This allows Microsoft (the monopolist) to use their market share to introduce artificial problems in the offerings of competitors (even if that problem is just Firefox is harder to obtain and install). Worse yet, Microsoft can use their dominance to prevent progress. Right now IE does not even completely support 8-year old Web standards that everyone else does... so those standards go unused by all because no developer can afford to lose 70% of potential customers. In this way the Web has been crippled; prevented from becoming a viable alternative for most applications (which would remove the need to pay MS for having a monopoly on desktop OS's).

Either way everyone gets a better browser. Win-win.

Sadly that is not the way it works when one player is leveraging a monopoly in another market. A lot of people end up with a worse browser (regardless of which one they use) as well as a less functional internet.

Still...

[Anonymous Coward]

regardless of whether IE8 can actually maintain any level of compliance, M$hit has already completely tarnished their reputation with developers who still have to cater to IE6 and IE7, that aren't going anywhere anytime soon enough. For anyone doing serious web development, this is very hard to forgive. Having another M$hit browser to have to support would almost be comical at this point, if it weren't so damn annoying.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[alshithead]

"The important thing is that MS is now saying they're willing to sacrifice backwards compatibility in IE."

Fantastic point.

I wonder how many little sites built by IE-centric coders are going to need a lot of work in order to function well with IE8.

Re:They also said Windows NT was POSIX compliant.

[RAMMS+EIN]

``If I were laying money on an outcome, it would be that IE 8 will continue to lag annoyingly behind the alternatives.''

Maybe not. Maybe the standards-compliance will go exactly so far that code developed against the standard (as far as it is supported by the competition) will also work in MSIE8, thus obviating the need to install an alternative browser if you have MSIE8 already. This would be a Good Thing for web developers, because they would no longer have to work around MSIE's non-compliance, and a Good Thing for Microsoft, because it could stop the decline in market share of MSIE. And, of course, adding some compelling extensions to MSIE8, they could actually make MSIE8 the _preferred_ browser for users and developers. Perhaps XAML and Silverlight already have that covered...

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Phroggy]

I understand your point, and it's well taken, but you are introducing a tautology. Standards compliance is absolute, by _definition_.

I take your point as well, but I want to interject that this entirely depends on what the standards are. Can you build a word processor that is 100% compliant with Microsoft's OOXML standard? Not really, in any meaningful sense, because the standard is incomplete and refers to behavior that isn't described as part of the standard (that's a large part of what all the OOXML vs ODF fuss was about). Can you build an IRC client that is completely standards-compliant? No, because the RFCs that describe how IRC works are incomplete, inconsistent, contain errors, and aren't strictly adhered to by any popular implementation.

In the case of HTML/XHTML and CSS, there's been quite a bit more effort invested into making sure the standards are properly documented and are internally consistent, but these standards are constantly evolving. Is it enough to support HTML 4.01 and CSS 2, or must you support HTML 5 and CSS 3? Do de-facto standards count? Remember that XMLHttpRequest (the basis of AJAX) is mostly a de-facto standard; the W3C has published a working draft [w3.org] of a specification for it.

Standards compliance isn't always as cut-and-dry as you make it sound.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Twinbee]

A couple of years back, I would have said something just like you did. I too, believe in many absolutes (including the quality of music/art, which is more controversial).

However, there are a few ways what he said could be interpreted, and it seems to me that by saying "it's relative", he's merely stating the obvious - that the implementation is relative to the "set-in-stone" standard.

If you still doubt this, then explain why he said "What we can say is that this one appears to be more compliant than before". That itself shows that he is saying there are 'degrees of quality' towards the standard, and that some implementations are closer (better) than others.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[mysticgoat]

Because a standard is a human production that has no physical reality, it is possible to fully comply with its every detail (assuming that it is a well-written standard).

And therein lies one hell of an operating assumption, WRT practically any standard generated by the W3C in the last decade. (CSS, DOM, XHTML, SVG... HTML 4.01 may well be the last thing they wrote that wasn't a complete [bleep]ing joke.)

And your point is....?

And why do exclude HTML 4.01 or the earlier work? Seems to me the split between HTML 4.x and XHTML 1.x has proven to be a pretty funny joke. And we were all laughing so hard at HTML v3.0 that no one actually got around to figuring out how to implement it. And the continuing giggles from that joke were so side-splitting that HTML v3.1 was dropped before we even got it to the punch line.

Nobody ever said a standard had to be serious. Look at the clowns of Redmond: they make money hand over fist, and they've yet to treat any standard seriously.