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IE 8 Passes Acid2 Test
notamicrosoftlover writes to tell us Channel9 is reporting that Internet Explorer 8 has correctly rendered the Acid2 page in "standards mode". "With respect to standards and interoperability, our goal in developing Internet Explorer 8 is to support the right set of standards with excellent implementations and do so without breaking the existing web. This second goal refers to the lessons we learned during IE 7. IE7's CSS improvements made IE more compliant with some standards and less compatible with some sites on the web as they were coded. Many sites and developers have done special work to work well with IE6, mostly as a result of the evolution of the web and standards since 2001 and the level of support in the various versions of IE that pre-date many standards. We have a responsibility to respect the work that sites have already done to work with IE. We must deliver improved standards support and backwards compatibility so that IE8 (1) continues to work with the billions of pages on the web today that already work in IE6 and IE7 and (2) makes the development of the next billion pages, in an interoperable way, much easier. We'll blog more, and learn more, about this during the IE8 beta cycle." There's also a video interview regarding IE8 development on Channel9."
Would anyone mind if they had rewrite their web pages or at the very least, remove the code that checks for the version of IE and if it is IE in the first place? I wouldn't mind.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
I guess when Bill Gates asks what the hell is going on, he gets results!
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Good News: ...
... in the year 2012 (give or take a few years), when the percentage of web users using IE 5, 6 or 7 finally dips below 5%.
Web developers will finally be able to develop a page once, according to standards, and have it work on all major browser
Bad News:
After all, how hard is it to build a special case for one specific website?
Wow, talk about moving the goalposts. It's reasonable to expect a Web browser to adhere to standards -- so when IE finally does, the new reason to hate MS is because IE also supports the pages that are on the Web today?
Making IE8 render pages the way IE7 does is the smart way to go for Microsoft. If people woke up one morning and none of their sites looked right, they'd be rightfully pissed off. IE8 will give people the time to make their "crap code" standards-compliant ... though if they haven't done it by IE9, they might be shit out of luck.
Oh, and BTW -- as long as people are coding, there will always be crap code. Standards will not make crap code go away.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
With respect to standards and interoperability, our goal in developing Internet Explorer 8 is to support the right set of standards with excellent implementations and do so without breaking the existing web.
Soooo... since you have created a community of non-standard web development practices in an otherwise open and standards-based world-wide community, you still feel like you should defend those who followed you in your path of non-standard lock-inery. No thanks. Suck it up and admit you made a big mistake by painting yourself into a corner.
This second goal refers to the lessons we learned during IE 7. IE7's CSS improvements made IE more compliant with some standards and less compatible with some sites on the web as they were coded.
Actually, that sounds exactly like your first goal. "As they were coded" really means "As they were coded to work with our non-standards-based web browser". Again, suck it up and just promise to follow the rules of the community, and we might actually start to respect you a bit more.
Many sites and developers have done special work to work well with IE6, mostly as a result of the evolution of the web and standards since 2001 and the level of support in the various versions of IE that pre-date many standards. We have a responsibility to respect the work that sites have already done to work with IE.
I'd like to hear about the 'pre-dated standards' you speak of. Most likely, You're talking about practices you implemented in IE that wandered from existing standards, which maybe became stabilized post-M$ implementation. You can't defend non-standardization by blaming the standards for being STANDARDS. If you break standards that everyone is supposed to adhere to, its YOUR fault, NOT those who didn't embrace your specific practices as their own, personal standards.
We must deliver improved standards support and backwards compatibility so that IE8 (1) continues to work with the billions of pages on the web today that already work in IE6 and IE7 and (2) makes the development of the next billion pages, in an interoperable way, much easier. We'll blog more, and learn more, about this during the IE8 beta cycle."
How about just making IE8 as standards-based as the other players in the field instead of feeling like you are required to ween your followers from your own sour milk?
As far as I'm concerned, the underlying goal is (and always has been for M$) in the very $ at the end of M$ that has become so popular for many. You can't mask the underlying motive with excuses like what you have given.
Suck it up and play by the rules, or you'll eventually be kicked out of the game.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Apparently that's now changed, and that's a very good thing. Personally, I credit the fact that Gates has given up the role of "software architect" in order to spend more time on his philanthropy. When he left, he seemed to take a lot of organizational arrogance with him.
Somebody is going to point out that ACID2 is not that great an example of real world CSS usage. That's perfectly true (how often do you use CSS to make silly pictures?) but the mere fact that MS has made passing the test a priority indicates a shift in attitude that we should all applaud.
Honestly, while I lubs me Firefox, Opera, and Safari, I'd rather have an IE that worked, for the rest of the world. Firefox gains market share, but the majority of the world will never switch - after all, it works fine out of the box, they can check their email and surf the web, right? For the sake of web developers' sanity, a standards-compliant IE can only be a good thing.
I find it something of a curious coincidence that as soon as Opera starts asking the EU to take legal action against MS and the little web developer revolt a while ago about the distinct lack of any information coming from the IE team regarding 8 that all of a sudden we have this "we'll be passing the acid2 test".
I can't help be slightly suspicious. I'll believe it when I see it.
The real question is, how back-portable is the IE8 browser? If it only runs on Vista, it's not going to matter much.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
That depends on when IE8 is released. It took them 1.75 years to get from announcing IE7 (Feb 2005) to releasing it (Nov 2006). Presumably they've been working on IE8 for a while, but if it takes them another 21 months, we're looking at fall 2009. Who knows what the Windows install base will look like then?
Personally, I'm hoping it'll be out by the end of 2008, though my current goal is to get people the hell off of IE6. Upgrade to IE7, switch to Firefox, Opera, Safari, whatever, just ditch that aging monstrosity of a browser if you possibly can (and aren't barred by your IT department, or a need to access some critical site that only works in IE6).
To be fair, any page without a DOCTYPE is not compliant, and can't be rendered in a compliant way. Any page without a DOCTYPE is probably buggy in other ways too. Firefox has a quirks mode too, and tries to fix buggy pages. It identifies a buggy page the same way, by looking at the DOCTYPE.
Everybody is in a pickle when it comes to rendering broken HTML. The only solutions are to do the best you can, or display an error message rather than a page. Also, to be fair, most of this mess is indeed caused by Microsoft, but even they can't fix it in a day.
I think it would be nice if browsers continued to fix spaghetti, but also showed a message somewhere that indicated that the page was buggy. Not a pop-up or anything, but a small, unobtrusive icon that was green and happy for a good page, or red and frowny for a bad. If IE had this by default, I think there would be a lot less bad pages on the internet.
Write your own Choose Your Own Adventure. http://www.freegameengines.org/gamebook-engine/
Sounds like the old Microsoft Cairo project. Each time a competitor was about to release a new product or new version of a product, Microsoft would launch a press release stating how much better everything would be with Cairo, who would be just six months away. The press and potential customers turned away from the competitor and started to talk about the marvelous Cairo future instead.
Except that Cairo never materialized.
Nah, check out the low UID.
More likely the voice of bitter experience.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Firefox has Standards Mode, too (right-click anywhere on a page->View Page Info). It differentiates between "Quirks" mode and Standards-compliance mode. "Quirks" mode is used when invalid markup is detected, or if there's no DOM declared; Standards-compliance mode simply means that the site is being displayed to spec, instead of being cleaned up by the browser's interpretation as to what way it should look. Standards-compliance mode, in theory, should always look the same on every browser (it's why standards *exist*), but as everyone who's done web design knows, that's not the case. That's not to say I support Microsoft, but as a web developer, I have to look forward to the day when most of the audience on the web can view my pages properly, without the need for time-consuming workarounds. In actuality, IE7 really has impacted me to an extent, since none of the old workarounds for IE6 work for it any more, and it still doesn't get things right. So I have to work around IE6, IE7, and any differences that those workarounds cause in browsers like Opera and Firefox who display it right the first time, which is a major headache and waste of time considering there's standards for these browsers to follow.
Screw the rules, I have green hair!
More importantly, when does a low UID on slashdot indicate that you are somehow more experienced than other IT professionals? Not registering for a glorified blog, until recently, has absolutely no bearing on someone's experience or lack thereof.
When it's a joke.
As much as I was bemused by considering a UID > 100,000 as low, I still understood that the post wasn't serious.
Advanced users are users too!