Internet Explorer 8 to be standards compliant???

Possibly a revolution for web designers

by Rupert Sharp
of http://www.oyster-web.co.uk

Last updated: 5 Mar 2008

A pig flew past the window a few seconds ago... it's also raining haddock. Yes, a recent announcement from Microsoft claims "IE8 has been significantly enhanced, and was designed with great support for current Internet standards.". This new development has been thought to be connected to a recent fine Microsoft has had to pay to the European Union concerning their alleged unethical business practices, although there is apparently no current legal requirement to become standards compliant but it makes it seem Microsoft is making an effort, Brad Smith said...

"While we do not believe there are currently any legal requirements that would dictate which rendering mode must be chosen as the default for a given browser, this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue"

This news hit me like a brick in a pottery shop, the struggle that designers have had trying to get a site to be as fully cross-browser compatible with IE may finally cool down. I don't expect it to stop nor do I believe IE8 will be perfect, not even the most acclaimed browsers are 100% compliant with standards, but Microsoft claim that their Beta version of IE8 can already pass the Acid2 test. The Acid Test was created by http://www.webstandards.org/ to test the standards compliancy of the browser your using by rendering a picture of a smilie face using nothing but CSS, this test has proven very effective and only a few browsers such as Opera can pass it enough to be considered 'standards compliant'.

Microsoft have also mentioned that this browser will have three compatibility modes; the first being the new standards compliant version, the second being Microsoft's rendering of the CSS for IE7 and the third is how older browsers such as IE5 downwards rendered pages. The reason they have decided to include all these different methods is to incorporate sites that are already designed to behave differently under IE, therefore rendering the CSS the way the designer at the time had hacked them to work. Although this makes sense in theory in practice this may prove futile, most users if presented with an older 'messed up' looking site based on IE5's rendering now corrupted by the standards compliant version will simply ignore it as opposed to changing the settings for their browser. But the principle idea still remains sound and will most probably prove useful to people who don't already use Firefox.

All in all I'm looking forward to seeing this new browser and its capabilities, not being an IE user myself it won't change worlds for me net-surfing wise but I'm hoping it will make life easier for web-designers everywhere.