Microsoft makes IE8 more compliant with new rendering mode
By Jonathan Schlaffer
Older versions of IE were just awful when it came to being compliant with any kind of standard. IE5.5 was a horrible mess and web developers had to be written specifically to look right in IE5.5. With the release of IE6 some sites broke and web developers had to once again fix a mess that Microsoft created. When IE7 was released, Microsoft once again tried to make it more standards compliant. This broke a lot of websites and web developers screamed bloody murder. The company is at it again and is going to make IE8 “the most standards compliant browser yet.” Oh, joy.
Unlike previous versions of IE which used the “doctype” specification to decide which rendering mode to use, IE8 will have something new. IE6 and IE7 have two modes “quirk” and “standards.” Quirks mode is used when the browser decides the site was written for older versions of IE and standards mode is used if it decides the site is compliant enough for “standards-conforming” behavior.
Sites that were written for IE6 broke in IE7 because it was more standard complaint. The usual solution was to just add blocks of code to make the site appear “acceptable.” In some cases, features of the website didn’t work in IE7 which required more work. IE7 has been out for a while and most major websites have fixed these problems or has been fixed by Microsoft with various patches and updates.
The solution Microsoft has decided on for IE8 is to add yet another compatibility layer to the already confusing and “not quite yet standard” rendering modes.
According to ArsTechnica, IE8 will have three layers,
- “Quirks mode” remains the same, and compatible with current content.
- “Standards mode” remains the same as IE7, and compatible with current content.
- If you (the page developer) really want the best standards support IE8 can give, you can get it by inserting a simple <meta> element.
The third mode will allow the developer to specify a <meta> tag that will which rendering mode the browser should use. If a page works in IE7, it should work in IE8 and even IE9 or all future versions of the browser. Microsoft worked closely with the Web Standards Project to develop the <meta> tag mode.
Internal development versions of IE8 are already passing the Acid2 test. But, just because a browser is standards complaint doesn’t mean that all websites are, in fact, few are. All browsers have omissions and bugs in their standards implementations. Firefox, Opera, Safari, Camino (and any I’ve forgotten) all have various quirks but are not as bad as any version of IE is or has been.
In addition to making IE8 more standards complaint, Microsoft should think about optimizing its speed as well, something Apple excels at with Safari.
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Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
Stumble It!
January 27th, 2008
But will it be free I mean will IE7 be updated that is the question.
Firefox I find better but even that has its share of problems
another thing I noticed when building websites you do need both browsers as they appear much different in IE browsers compared to Firefox
August 30th, 2008
I tried the compatibility of IE8 on a website and our CMS software. The results are mixed. The website worked pretty well, but on the AJAX rich admin GUI IE8 failed miserably. I also compared it to Firefox 3.1, and it works all fine. See the details in my blog.