IE8 will have multiple render modes

[Colin-uk Veteran]

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

Its not that they dont like standards, its just they dont want to break the other 60% of the web that hasnt been using standards so that the pages render ok in IE6/7.

If they didnt like standards, they wouldnt have support for it in IE8.

Who cares about IE8 ?

Pretty much anyone that makes a living on the web. thats a lot of people.

[FlibbyFlobby]

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.

How else exactly do you expect the web to ever get into a situation were its standards compliant if the IE team opts for backwards compatibility time after time? It's already been noted that they are seriously considering this meta tag solution for a few releases. By making standards opt-in there is zero incentive for site developers to fix their markup. Explain to me how this a good long term solution?

The real solution is to use this proprietary meta tag to opt-out of IE8 standards compliant rendering. But what about the corporate intranets? Simple, allow group policies to switch the rendering mode for intranet and trusted sites. And for those who generate their markup with Dreamweaver and Frontpage, scan the markup meta tags to discover the generator and apply the appropriate rendering mode.

Its ironic you say "Eventually when adoption of standards has really taken off" when it's narrow minded short term decisions like this from the IE team that will never allow (nor encourage) it to happen.

[+mrbester MVC]

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.

Good. Bring it on. We know what we're doing. However, what should happen is that there is a completely different rendering engine that kicks in with standards mode and leave crappy Trident to deal with the IE-specific bollocks that has been generated over the years. This was suggested for IE7, but ignored. Freezing (apart from security updates) the rendering engine should have happened 6 years ago.

At least this new <meta> is http-equiv so you can send it as a HTTP header and not have to clutter up your pages with tags that only IE would care about.

However, the bottom line is that this is a **** idea. You make something that is standards compliant, it should bloody well render as the standards state. As browsers mature (and new ones come on the market) the rendering issues should be addressed. At the moment developers (usually) have to target two types of browser; IE and everything else. This "solution" locks to a specific version of specific browsers (forget about "edge" it's too dangerous) and thus legacy sites need updating in order to maintain compatibilities.

The reason the web has so much crap HTML is Microsoft's fault for NEVER even considering making a browser that adhered even slightly to the very same standards that they agreed to and letting IE stagnate for over half a decade. Now this rubbish comes along after the first version that could understand <abbr/>.

[shakey_snake]

So.... I've done some more reading on this, and This article has put me to peace with this, to some extent...

Important bits:

And most importantly: if IE8 sees a not-yet-widely-deployed DOCTYPE (like HTML5’s), it will use “super standards mode”

and

No official word yet on whether IE8 will support XHTML and its MIME type (but if it did, this would be a new DOCTYPE and would not need any <meta> tag). A year and a half ago, Chris told Mary Jo that XHTML would probably not happen in IE8 - but that was a year and a half ago…

So, if xtml (is supported) and html5 get rendered in "super standards mode" by default, I could see this working, since the web will be able to continue to evolve without a the special meta tag (id est, without IE holding it up).

So essentially, the IE team (and corporate powers that be) have created a short term solution and a medium term problem, but it won't have long term effects, which is nice to see, and what I was really fearful of in the beginning.

Edited January 24, 2008 by shakey_snake

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

What's the difference between a "not-yet-widely-deployed" DOCTYPE and a non-standard (but valid) one?

Is IE8 going to render valid sites badly but invalid sites according to the specs?

[shakey_snake]

What's the difference between a "not-yet-widely-deployed" DOCTYPE and a non-standard (but valid) one?

Wha? I don't know what you mean by "non-standard (but valid) one".

a "not-yet-widely-deployed" DOCTYPE is one that is a W3C recommendation, but not widely used on the web, yet. (So, to put simply anything not HTML 4.01)

Is IE8 going to render valid sites badly but invalid sites according to the specs?

Well, adding the META tag will not "invalidate" any HTML 4.01 document, but nether did adding most of the "IE6 hacks" to begin with either.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

HTML5 isn't a W3C recomendation, so either IE8 is looking for it (wouldn't mind that), or it assumes unknown doctypes should render in "super standards mode" (hence the "non-standard but valid")

So I could write a standards compliant page and not hit super-standards mode unless I put their tag in, but I could write an invalid page and hit super-standards mode (which is was I was getting at with the second bit)

[y_notm]

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

Except that wouldn't work, as pages built to IE7's standards mode have the DOCTYPE in them, which still leaves the problem of how do you identify an IE8 standards mode-compliant site?

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

You shouldn't have to.

A site that renders in standards mode in IE7 should also render in standards mode in IE8 (that is, it gets the improvements the new engine offers without having to add custom tags)

[CrimsonBetrayal]

Well I'm one of the few who makes a living on the web. In other words, I write web applications for Multi-national Logistics companies. The W3C standards have always been a part of my test and I ensure that all pages comply. No one realizes the importance of standards until a disabled person sues the company they just built a website for based on discrimination because they couldn't use their screen-reader/special mouse to access the site and then in turn that company counter-sues you for not making the site to standards compliance. Basically, not making a standards compliance site eliminates 10%-15% of your possible user base.

In a business sense, 10-15 is a lot and any company that cares about profit should care about the web standards which have been put their for good reason. It's not only so that the site renders in any browser, it's also so that the site can be used by anyone. Having to 'opt-in' for standards compliance may be a good transition point and the only way that Microsoft can save face for the damage they caused with the mess that was IE6. It's a start, I hope in IE9 they can remove it altogether so that we can all develop to standards and make things work. :)

[shakey_snake]

HTML5 isn't a W3C recomendation...

Well, not yet. It did just get it's first working draft published however, so it's well on it's way to becoming one.

Like I said before:

short term solution, medium term problem, but there's no long term consequences -- and that puts me somewhat to ease.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Long term problem for Microsoft as now they have to keep distributing old versions of the engines, and maintaining them (imagine if IE7 also included versions 1 through 6)

If they don't do that, then there's no point in doing this system (as it's going to update older sites for the newer engine, making the system useless)

[+mrbester MVC]

Having to 'opt-in' for standards compliance may be a good transition point...

Good for whom?

Other browser makers won't adopt this; why should they? They display pages that are declared to be standards compliant pages in standards mode. If those pages aren't actually compliant, then that is the fault of the lying page designer.

Developers have to add extra tags to an already compliant page so one particular browser shows it in compliance mode? Not happening. Life is too short for that kind of half-arsed bollocks.

Users wouldn't care less. If a site doesn't render correctly they will blame the designer, not the browser. This means that if there is a rendering issue with IE8 that only an unnecessary header / <meta> tag will cure then Microsoft will be directly responsible for driving users to a competitors site that has jumped through the hoop.

... and the only way that Microsoft can save face for the damage they caused with the mess that was IE6.

They cannot save face. Why do you defend them and consider allowing them any wriggle room? They broke the web (in order to gain monopoly) and now they want to break it some more.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

ok, reading some more and I found a bit of information about super standards mode and doctypes.

Any unknown doctype will trigger super standards mode, known doctypes that trigger standards mode in IE7 will stay in IE7 mode, and quirks mode doctypes will render like IE6.

They better include XHTML 1.1 in the super standards mode, they stuffed up (IMO) by making XHTML 1.0 stay in IE7 mode (since IE7 doesn't understand XHTML).

Of course I could be wrong and they treat XHTML 1.0 (strict, transitional, etc.) as super standards mode, or they could treat XHTML 1.1 as IE7 standards mode too (which would be silly).

Easiest way around this (if you're writing standards compliant sites and using valid XHTML) is to use one of the other few XHTML doctypes (like XHTML+MathML+SVG, etc.)

Edit: you could also modify your server to send IE=edge in the HTTP headers, will make IE behave like other browsers in standards mode

Edit 2: http://intertwingly.net/blog/2008/01/22/Be...andards-Support explains how to do that for Apache, I've enabled it on my site (for all pages) so I don't have to keep making each page specifically state twice that it wants to be rendered properly (luckily other browsers only need to be told once).

Edited January 25, 2008 by The_Decryptor

[+mrbester MVC]

^ so you've (probably) killed the server caching if you implemented it exactly as writ on intertwingly and done Microsoft's work for them.

I for one will not add a single thing to my standards compliant pages for them to be rendered in standards mode by any browser, simply because I shouldn't have to, and it is offensive that a browser manufacturer expects this to happen. If that means that pages "don't work" then I will happily tell clients exactly why they "don't work"; the browser they are using doesn't work and is unfit for purpose.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

I think it's stupid too, and I will probably end up removing it (I do half this stuff just as experiments, I've never seen those commands before, so I thought I'd try them out).

I turned IE support on and off on my old blog whenever I felt like it really, half the time IE users got a grey page, other half of the time they got a download prompt.

[+Fahim S. MVC]

the browser they are using doesn't work and is unfit for purpose.

So you would rather code sites/web apps (not sure which you build) that don't work on 90% of the browsers out there?

I'm surprised you stay in business at all.

[Elliot B.]

Internet Explorer 8 is going to be the most standards-compliant IE yet, but it's going about it in a way that has some people scratching their heads. With Internet Explorer 8, you have a choice in standards compliance modes. Sound oxymoronic? Shouldn't there be one standards mode by default? Heck, shouldn't the only mode be standards mode? Ah, idealism.

One of the nastier things about being a web developer, I'm told, is the existence of Internet Explorer. Massively popular, but full of "quirks," coding around IE can be a real pain. When IE7 shipped, many web developers recoiled in horror as sites that worked fine in IE6 broke.

The problem, as is so often the case, is backwards compatibility. IE5.5 (and below) was decidedly nonstandard in its rendering behavior. Hundreds of millions of web pages were written to look "right" in IE5.5's broken rendering. The result was something of a quandary for Microsoft when it came to release IE6. They wanted to improve the standards conformance in IE6, but couldn't afford to break pages dependent on the older behavior.

The solution was the "doctype switch". The doctype switch allowed IE6 to support both the old IE5.5 behavior?"quirks mode"?and new, more standards-conforming behavior?"standards mode." Doctypes are an optional part of HTML pages, which specify which version of the HTML spec a page is using. In the olden days of the web, most web pages didn't bother to specify?they barely heeded the mandatory parts of the standards, let alone optional parts. So the presence of the doctype could be used to pick between modes?if someone used a doctype, they probably knew what they were doing, and wanted "standards mode." No doctype (or a doctype specifying an old version of HTML) and they were probably assuming nonstandard behavior, and "quirks mode" would be pickedRead more: more: http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/ie8...ndards-mode.ars

[itsnotabigtruck]

Every time Microsoft seems to be bringing IE into the 21st century, they make some decision to screw it up entirely. This is that decision. :no:

Talk about one step forward, two steps back...

[Elliot B.]

Every time Microsoft seems to be bringing IE into the 21st century, they make some decision to screw it up entirely. This is that decision. :no:

Talk about one step forward, two steps back...

Right Mr. Wise. What would you do in their situation?

[FlibbyFlobby]

Right Mr. Wise. What would you do in their situation?

Be standards compliant by default? How can the web ever get standards compliant if IE waits for every website made in frontpage and dreamweaver to get up to scratch? If you bother to read the blog comments you'll see there are plenty of credible alternative solutions being offered up.

[Ivan Kot]

why not simply make it finally standards-compatible?

I'm personally is tired of making a website and then opening IE and here we go again fixing render bugs for it :(

[tiagosilva29]

why not simply make it finally standards-compatible?

I'm personally is tired of making a website and then opening IE and here we go again fixing render bugs for it :(

You have to do it like when you're training a dog: ignore it but make clear your position, do this until it learns his place in the pack.

Webstandards are the alpha, browsers obey; not the other way around.

[+Fahim S. MVC]

You have to do it like when you're training a dog: ignore it but make clear your position, do this until it learns his place in the pack.

Webstandards are the alpha, browsers obey; not the other way around.

Agree, but you want Microsoft to launch a browser 90% of todays web doesn't display in?

And when Joe Average downloads it and find it breaks all his favourite sites (ones that are built for IE6 and 7), then what is he going to do? He's going to revert to the previous version and you can say goodbye to your web standards.

What is being proposed is actually a good idea, not just for Internet Explorer but for all browsers - you'd understand it too if you actually tried to understood the rational rather than taking your 'Internet Explorer is the devil' stance.

[tiagosilva29]

What is being proposed is actually a good idea, not just for Internet Explorer but for all browsers - you'd understand it too if you actually tried to understood the rational rather than taking your 'Internet Explorer is the devil' stance.

There's no stance to be taken when you follow the proper standards. I just don't care, I'll follow standards.