IE8 will have multiple render modes

[FlibbyFlobby]

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

Yeah, perhaps we should just scrap standards and let everyone do what the hell they want. :rolleyes: Your flying in the face of your own statement anyway. The end user only wants to see the webpage as it should be, right? That's not always easy to achieve when you have to hack around things specifically for IE, even though you've coded to W3C standards. It isn't exactly driving innovation of the WWW either. Having a standards compliant IE8 by default will benefit everyone in the long term.

As always 83.2% of all statistics are made up on the spot too. ;)

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.

The whole internet was going to 'break' when IE7 was due for release. Oh wait that didn't happen did it. How can you move forwards when your also trying to go backwards all the time too? There has to be a cut off point sometime. All multiple rendering engines will do is make developers life's even harder and further bloat the IE code base. Benefits all round then. :s

How would IE hacks break pages if IE8 was to be standards compliant exactly? The hacks exist because IE isn't standards compliant in the first place. Besides hacks are normally targeted at specific versions of IE anyway (conditional comments for example).

Edited January 23, 2008 by ziadoz

[shakey_snake]

Uh, I don't mean to sound like a dick, but who the **** cares?

:rolleyes: The people who have to navigate a minefield to create web pages, obviously.

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

Soooooooooooo, how is requiring more IE specific hacks really helping rectify the situation? :wacko:

And besides, breaking those ('standard' webpage with IE specific hacks) pages won't matter because those companies and developers have already shown a willingness to evolve with standards.

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

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

It already does...

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.

No, it'll further propagate the myth that you need to put in hacks to get proper rendering in IE... and won't offer an incentive to removing said hacks.

[Lewism]

It already does...

No, it'll further propagate the myth that you need to put in hacks to get proper rendering in IE... and won't offer an incentive to removing said hacks.

Because standards are off by default, the ACID team won't add the switch to activate them on the ACID2 test.

So IE8 will fail.

[Echilon]

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.

Well put. Eventually they'll have to drop support for the hacks used for earlier versions of IE.

[jimbo11883]

I only develop for Firefox, Safari, and Opera. If some things don't work in IE 5/6/7/8/whatever, who cares. I want out of the web development business anyways, too frustrating... along with the fact that I'm making no money at all.

[Chode]

A fantastic idea, and one that Opera has already been using for a while now to excellent effectiveness. :)

[+Fahim S. MVC]

Everyone who says that Microsoft should 'grow balls' and just switch to standards mode is naive at best, a complete muppet if you ask me.

There are a number of other considerations that need to be taken before launching a forced upgrade on people, especially when considering the proliferation of Internet Explorer in the corporate environment. Also a wholsesale change will actually slowdown uptake because it will break so much (let's call this the Vista effect), so it is in their interest to retain compatibility.

There are downsides to having a quirks mode... but the advantages of a phased migration far outweight a big-bang change.

[XerXis]

Everyone who says that Microsoft should 'grow balls' and just switch to standards mode is naive at best, a complete muppet if you ask me.

There are a number of other considerations that need to be taken before launching a forced upgrade on people, especially when considering the proliferation of Internet Explorer in the corporate environment. Also a wholsesale change will actually slowdown uptake because it will break so much (let's call this the Vista effect), so it is in their interest to retain compatibility.

There are downsides to having a quirks mode... but the advantages of a phased migration far outweight a big-bang change.

it's not the fact that they keep a quirks mode, it's the fact that they now introduce three rendering modes! 2 should be enough, quirks mode for every page that is not standard compliant, standard mode for a page that has a doctype. It's not that difficult to grasp why introducing a third mode enabled by a ie8 specific meta key is a bad idea

[+Fahim S. MVC]

it's not the fact that they keep a quirks mode, it's the fact that they now introduce three rendering modes! 2 should be enough, quirks mode for every page that is not standard compliant, standard mode for a page that has a doctype. It's not that difficult to grasp why introducing a third mode enabled by a ie8 specific meta key is a bad idea

If you read the article, three levels of compatibility are complete necessary, as the HTML standard doesn't have a new DocType which can be used with IE (as IE7 did). By all means, propose a better solution for three levels of compatibility!

[FlibbyFlobby]

If you read the article, three levels of compatibility are complete necessary, as the HTML standard doesn't have a new DocType which can be used with IE (as IE7 did). By all means, propose a better solution for three levels of compatibility!

If standards compliant mode isn't the default where is the incentive to use it? IE8 won't be a forced upgrade until IE7 has significantly superseded IE6 anyway, so why not use this opportunity to get a standards compliant version of IE8 out . Then whilst IE6 corporate users migrate to IE7, IE8 has the time to mature. When it eventually becomes a forced update they will again have had time to be ready for the change. I agree you can't just cut compatibility like that, but this is a diluted short term solution to a problem that can't be solved by constantly being backwards compatible and adding secret handshake meta tags.

[hotdog666al]

Just make IE render like the new Firefox does and we'll be happy. XD

Alot of my work invovles fixing IE6/7 bugs and it's not *that* bad.

...IE6 does some strange ass things though. :|

[+Fahim S. MVC]

If standards compliant mode isn't the default where is the incentive to use it? IE8 won't be a forced upgrade until IE7 has significantly superseded IE6 anyway, so why not use this opportunity to get a standards compliant version of IE8 out . Then whilst IE6 corporate users migrate to IE7, IE8 has the time to mature. When it eventually becomes a forced update they will again have had time to be ready for the change. I agree you can't just cut compatibility like that, but this is a diluted short term solution to a problem that can't be solved by constantly being backwards compatible and adding secret handshake meta tags.

But that's what you don't seem to understand - forcing standards mode will break everything, which will make people not use this browser. If they don't use this browser they will continue to use the previous version, and web developers will have to continue to code for it.

If they take this route, people will upgrade their browser with the confidence that 90% of the web won't break and developers can use standards mode. Eventually when adoption of standards has really taken off, they can start to ignore the otherwise harmless meta tag.

[+M2Ys4U Subscriber¹]

Because standards are off by default, the ACID team won't add the switch to activate them on the ACID2 test.

So IE8 will fail.

The important thing is that the rendering engine can parse the ACID 2 code and produce the correct result, not that the page that the Acid 2 test is hosted on triggers the correct rendering...

MS should completely abandon the IE6 rendering, and use IE7's standards mode as the new quirks mode.

[+Fahim S. MVC]

The important thing is that the rendering engine can parse the ACID 2 code and produce the correct result, not that the page that the Acid 2 test is hosted on triggers the correct rendering...

MS should completely abandon the IE6 rendering, and use IE7's standards mode as the new quirks mode.

Without a doubt they considered that option, but I would think it wasn't chosen due to the reluctant uptake of IE7 in corporate environments.

[Boeing 787]

You guys are completely wrong about this:

1. I test my site with IE8 new mode...it render's fine so I add the tag.

2. I test my site with IE8 new mode...it doesn't render properly I don't add the tag.

3. Done.

It gives the website owner the power to decide which render mode will be used when a IE8 user lands on my site.

Thank you Microsoft for giving me the ability to make sure my site still works for all the new IE8 users.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

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.

Wow, I fail.

Yes, this is retarded, If a page is in standards mode it should render according to the standards, this is just adding another layer of crap (Do you want IE6 rendering, IE7 rendering or IE8 rendering?).

[libertas83]

This article gives a better explanation:

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

So has anyone actually read the article? Microsoft did not make this decision by itself. This was a recommendation to Microsoft by the Web Standards Project and others. The solution also targets multiple browsers. Here are a few highlights for you

Microsoft reached out to The Web Standards Project (of which I am a member) and to several other standards-aware developers, and asked for our help in coming up with a better method of allowing developers to ?opt in? to proper standards support. The goal was to find a method that was more explicit than the DOCTYPE switch, and could be implemented in any browser, not just IE.

Using a simple meta declaration, we can specify the rendering engine we would like IE8 to use. For example, inserting this:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8" />into the head of a document would make IE8 render the page using the new standards mode. This syntax could be easily expanded ncorporate other browsers as well:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=8;FF=3;OtherUA=4" />

As much as it pains me to lose this particular aspect of progressive enhancement, this behavior is honestly the best thing that could happen, especially when the site concerned is public-faciAfter all, we shouldn?t make assumptions about how browsers will behave in the future.e. If a change in IE9 would break the layout of our site or the functionality of one of our scripts, that could be disastrous for our users, sending our team into a mad scramble to ?fix? the website that was working fine before the new browser launched (which is pretty much the boat we?re in now). Version targeting gives our team the ability to decide when to offer support for a new browser and, more importantly, gives us the much-needed time to make any adjustments necessary to introduce support for that new browser version.

I highly encourage reading the rest of the article as it goes more into why they are doing this. Its not Microsoft specific and this was not a Microsoft only decision. They just laid out one rule and asked for help and that is to not break the existing web.

[Linkinfamous]

Wow, I fail.

Yes, this is retarded, If a page is in standards mode it should render according to the standards, this is just adding another layer of crap (Do you want IE6 rendering, IE7 rendering or IE8 rendering?).

I would assume it's just until they can phase out IE7-style rendering.

In any case, you have to look at it practically. It's a hell of a lot easier to expect people writing new content to put the meta tag in when new pages are being coded rather than simply wanting to break a HUGE portion of the internet.

[revvo]

This is just a sorry excuse to not fully support standards.

They should support but deprecrate their style of coding and help enforce standards through Visual Studio and maybe a debugger similar to Firefox where it would detect the site errors and reccomend something that should be used like getElementById instead of document.all, and so forth.

[spenser.d]

^^^And I think all the comments like that are just sorry excuses to hate on Microsoft because, for some reason I'm not aware of, that's the cool thing to do.

Not that anyone cares.

-Spenser

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

I would assume it's just until they can phase out IE7-style rendering.

In any case, you have to look at it practically. It's a hell of a lot easier to expect people writing new content to put the meta tag in when new pages are being coded rather than simply wanting to break a HUGE portion of the internet.

I don't see why people who write their pages properly have to use custom meta tags just so the bad web designers don't have to change.

Edit: A large portion of the internet would render in quirks mode, this change only effects people targeting standards mode (if the page is in quirks mode it's going to render the same as IE6, if it's in standards mode it will render the same as IE7)

[revvo]

^^^And I think all the comments like that are just sorry excuses to hate on Microsoft because, for some reason I'm not aware of, that's the cool thing to do.

Not that anyone cares.

Before coming here and defending a multibillion monopolistic company get to know your topic. Why would you defend "poor lil Microsoft" ? Besides, Microsoft's so big we're not attacking Microsoft as a whole but the department responsible for Internet Explorer. I've got nothing against the guys working on Office or Windows but the ones working on IE have always played things their way, never the standard's way, despite the CSS2 standard being around for over 10 years now. Since 1998, we've seen the development of Windows 98SE, ME, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, development of an Xbox, xbox360 and I can go on here but the guys at IE? Oh no, nothing there smoking cigars and sittin down, at least until FF came in the picture. Either that, or they had no one for most of the time working on any web-related applications which is unlikely.

You're telling me they can't find a way to support the current IE6-7 working websites while beginning to enforce standards and discourage IE6-style web designs? This multiple render mode is not a solution.

Microsoft is strong enough to enforce the web standards onto anyone, but they don't like standards. It's that simple.

[Mathiasdm]

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

Because the people that care are the people that make websites?

If, in any programming language, a different compiler would produce an entirely different program (I know there are tiny differences between compilers, but I'm not talking about small differences here), I'd get pretty annoyed.

If I program in Java, C, C++ or any other language, I follow the language standards, and expect reliable results.

But somehow, that's not required when making a website? (And yes, I know: xhtml and html are not programming languages, they're markup languages, but the same point applies: reliable results!)

Oh, and for the record: there are standards in place for other layers in the internet model, and without them, there wouldn't be an internet: IP, TCP, UDP, HTTP, FTP, and so on. They're all standards, and most people using the internet don't even know about them. Then again, I don't know many people who use the internet, and don't use TCP and UDP...

Yep, I guess standards are really not important.

---

Oh, and concerning the tag: I'm unsure about it. Yes, it'll be a lot easier than adding hacks, but I still think the doctype should be enough.

[Hum]

Who cares about IE8 ?

IE6 is still working just fine, on those rare times I even use it.

I'm mostly happy using Firefox. :)