IE8 will have multiple render modes

[FlibbyFlobby]

Compatability and IE8

In Dean?s recent Internet Explorer 8 and Acid2: A Milestone post, he highlighted our responsibility to deliver both interoperability (web pages working well across different browsers) and backwards compatibility (web pages working well across different versions of IE). We need to do both, so that IE8 continues to work with the billions of pages on the web today that already work in IE6 and IE7 but also makes the development of the next billion pages (in an interoperable way) much easier. Continuing Dean?s theme, I?d like to talk about some steps we are taking in IE8 to achieve these goals.

I?ve been on the IE team for over a decade, and I?ve seen us apply the ?Don?t Break the Web? rule in six different major versions of IE in different ways. In IE 6, we used the DOCTYPE switch to enable different ?modes? of behavior to protect compatibility. When we released IE 6 in 2001, very few pages on the web were in ?standards mode? (my team ran a report on the top 200 web sites at the time that reported less than 1%) ? few people knew what a DOCTYPE was, and few tools generated them. We used the DOCTYPE switch in IE6 to change the box model to comply with the standards and enable developers to opt-in to the new behavior. We?d already seen so much content written to IE5.x?s non-standard interpretation of the CSS2 spec that we couldn?t change it without causing a slew of problems.

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IE Blog

[ThePitt]

sounds interesting. I only hope they dont screw the memory management. Like FF does.

[Linkinfamous]

Why the angry face in the title?

Any site that properly shoves a good doctype in place will render with the 'good' engine. Quirks is for old/bad stuff.

[jimbo11883]

This is just pure crap. Microsoft should put that non-standard crap behind them, grow a pair of balls, and then allow only rendering that meets today's standards. Websites that look like crap as a result can be modified to work.

[JiveMasterT]

This is just pure crap. Microsoft should put that non-standard crap behind them, grow a pair of balls, and then allow only rendering that meets today's standards. Websites that look like crap as a result can be modified to work.

Agreed. This is why there is why their OS gets more and more bloated with every new release.

[FlibbyFlobby]

Why the angry face in the title?

Any site that properly shoves a good doctype in place will render with the 'good' engine. Quirks is for old/bad stuff.

You need to insert a special meta tag to 'opt-in' to standards compliancy rendering. It's a bad idea if you ask me. Where do you draw the line with backwards compatability? It's Microsofts hesistance to adhere to open standards that has put them (and ultimately web developers) in this situation in the first place.

If they are serious about taking a step forwards IE8 should render standards compliant by default. If compliance has to be triggered by a special meta tag, whats the difference between shipping and IE7 and IE8? Are all developers honestly going to update all their webpages with this new meta? What if your website isn't built with a serverside language like PHP with the header being an included file? Would you want to trawl through adding this tag to hundreds of static pages just for it to look ok in 1 browser? Microsoft has to stop talking about being serious about standards and make a difficult decision for once.

The only tiny advantage I see in this is it will mean testing in IE7 and IE8 could be done with the meta tag to switch rendering modes, rather than using Virtual Machines. I'd take standards compliancy over this personally.

Edited January 23, 2008 by ziadoz

[Mike]

This is just pure crap. Microsoft should put that non-standard crap behind them, grow a pair of balls, and then allow only rendering that meets today's standards. Websites that look like crap as a result can be modified to work.

the non-standard crap as you put it was made when IE ruled the web and i would say that they could set the standard based on that. what use is a standard that nobody used? now MS are going to 'the' standard (which is probably a minority still) they still want backwards compatibility so people who have made sites for IE aren't left with broken sites, is that wrong? course not!

the problem i see with this is, I make a site and use Opera to test it, after quite a few changes i check it in ff/ie6/ie7 and fix it up, now when IE8 comes around, i can assume it has differences like opera/firefox do and so would have to check the site in IE8's standards mode, or, just leave it in IE7 mode.

a good idea to have a toggle but also pointless for now, enabling it would mean serving different css for IE7 / IE8 as opposed to a single one for IE7 / IE8(in 7 mode)

[Ironman273]

I'm no web designer, but from a layman's point of view what is so great about standards? It seems like a group decided "these are the standards and here is the acid test." Most of the web decided to make things work in IE and it looks fine. Why get so hung up about this mystical standard? I may have it completely wrong, but that's the perception of someone that is just sitting on the sidelines.

[Punio4]

Problem is, if you're making a webpage, and you follow the standards, you KNOW it will work.

However, IE's "standard" isn't documented anywhere, so it's mosty trial and error, or experience based on previous, or someone else's trial and error.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

This is surprising?

Every (good) web browser does (should do) it, Firefox, IE, etc.,

Rendering every page in standards mode will just cause issues (on the non-standard sites), it's better to use documented, standard means to switch between rendering modes (if you write your page properly, you get standards mode, if not you get quirks mode).

[Linkinfamous]

This is just pure crap. Microsoft should put that non-standard crap behind them, grow a pair of balls, and then allow only rendering that meets today's standards. Websites that look like crap as a result can be modified to work.

'Grow a pair of balls' and basically destroy the ability to use a good portion of the internet? Yeah. That's smart.

When you control the vast majority of the web browser market, and your standard has been the right way for a very long time, you have to do things like this. Get over it.

[WarStorm]

Whatever microsoft do people aint happy!

Try to follow standards, peoples websites break- they get moaned at

Dont follow standard they get moaned at (rightly so) -

Try to keep both users happy, backwards compatable and follows standard and now you say itll be bloated.

In my opinion, Microsoft have done the right thing. Moving forward whilst maintaining compatability is the way forward.

I take there were no standards when Microsoft first released its browser? - how did IE get into this mess in the first place?

[garpunkal]

I'm no web designer, but from a layman's point of view what is so great about standards? It seems like a group decided "these are the standards and here is the acid test." Most of the web decided to make things work in IE and it looks fine. Why get so hung up about this mystical standard? I may have it completely wrong, but that's the perception of someone that is just sitting on the sidelines.

You really do not know what you are talking about.

I am a web developer and I understand the benefits of having standards and those standards being used by all browsers.

The simple benefits are more visibility across the web as all browsers will comply with standards, more productivity is gain from not having to code for other browsers to gain visiblity. Less accessibility concerns when coding to standards.

Not everyone uses Internet Explorer.

[shakey_snake]

'Grow a pair of balls' and basically destroy the ability to use a good portion of the internet? Yeah. That's smart.

When you control the vast majority of the web browser market, and your standard has been the right way for a very long time, you have to do things like this. Get over it.

no no no no no. You're not at all getting what this means, at all.

With this announcement, MS is basically creating a system where there are 3 tiers of web pages, and they are making DOCTYPE declarations essentially obsolete

Basically, all web pages that currently render correctly in standard compliant browsers will have to be retro-fitted with a new (proprietary) <meta> tag to be rendered by the mode in IE which follows WC3 standards (which the IE8 team calls "super standards mode")

This article gives a better explanation:

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/beyonddoctype

Basically, this is the same kind of retro-fitting that has happened with User-agent strings, which is why all user-agent strings are full of now meaningless age-old crap before you get to the actual meaningful stuff.

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

Why the angry face in the title?

Any site that properly shoves a good doctype in place will render with the 'good' engine. Quirks is for old/bad stuff.

This is surprising?

Every (good) web browser does (should do) it, Firefox, IE, etc.,

Rendering every page in standards mode will just cause issues (on the non-standard sites), it's better to use documented, standard means to switch between rendering modes (if you write your page properly, you get standards mode, if not you get quirks mode).

No, re-read the article. You have to opt-in to this "super-standards" mode rather than just write valid code because previous webmasters were being retarded about serving IE7 **** code in standards mode.

[shakey_snake]

Gecko Developer Robert O'Callahan has an interesting point in his blog

The IEBlog predictably announces that Web developers will have to use a <meta> tag or HTTP header to get IE to treat a page with post-IE7 standards compliance. Obviously a lot of people are going to be upset about this. I'm actually just puzzled. I see the business argument for taking this approach in the short term, but in the long term, it seems to impose a crippling burden on IE development...

[Colin-uk Veteran]

I think this is a good idea, except for the meta tag, the "super standards" mode should be made default, and if the page doesnt have a DOCTYPE revert to quirks/old mode.

[XerXis]

sigh, i don't like the idea of having to opt-in with a propietary metatag. They should follow the doctype, if a webdeveloper has a doctype on their page, assume they are following the standards. If not that doctype has no meaning anyway and the site is a pile of crap. It's about time people realise that not every fool with a copy of dreamweaver (or god forbid word or frontpage) is able to make a website.

[Menge]

come ON! they should make the super standards mode default!

if they keep the old rendering mode by default, then we'll never ever get the web moving to standards properly (face it. lots of us validate and follow standards... but most of the devs out there simply don't)

I've been monitoring a client's website for the browser market share and screen resolution and god damn it... IE has whooping 95% of the target audience and 82% of the IE users are still on IE6 :s

excuse me... i'll go kill myself now...

[red.]

I agree with you guys. The Super Standards mode should be enabled by default and quirks mode is used when there is no DOCTYPE. Having 3 rendering modes is overkill.

[FATILA]

Will be years before IE8 even makes a significant dent most likely, unless updates are mandated.

[shakey_snake]

It's funnypathetic when you think about it, IE8 still won't pass Acid 2. ;)

[spenser.d]

Uh, I don't mean to sound like a dick, but who the **** cares? What is it, like 80% of people use IE? I'm willing to bet that there's only 1% of people (and I'm being generous) are people like you who even know what internet standards are. The rest just care that they can see the websites they browse just fine. It's pretty easy to see why MS isn't gung ho about passing whatever tests there may be - not that many people that use IE actually give a damn so long as they get their webpage.

-Spenser

[alpha_omega]

Gecko Developer Robert O'Callahan has an interesting point in his blog

Thanks for the link!

I agree with the author. And I hope that Mozilla, Opera & Co. will not play along. Why should they pay the price for MSs non-compliance with standards? For irresponsibly ignoring their own product for 5 years straight. Why?

[Linkinfamous]

no no no no no. You're not at all getting what this means, at all.

With this announcement, MS is basically creating a system where there are 3 tiers of web pages, and they are making DOCTYPE declarations essentially obsolete

Basically, all web pages that currently render correctly in standard compliant browsers will have to be retro-fitted with a new (proprietary) <meta> tag to be rendered by the mode in IE which follows WC3 standards (which the IE8 team calls "super standards mode")

This article gives a better explanation:

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/beyonddoctype

Basically, this is the same kind of retro-fitting that has happened with User-agent strings, which is why all user-agent strings are full of now meaningless age-old crap before you get to the actual meaningful stuff.

If they do that, then every 'standard' webpage with IE specific hacks will break, spectacularly.

I'm willing to bet that that's a lot more problematic than asking people to put a metatag in.