IE8 Will Be Standards-Compliant By Default

A number of readers wrote in to make sure we know about Microsoft's change of heart regarding IE8. The new version of the dominant browser will render in full standards mode by default. Developers wishing to use quirks mode for IE6- and IE7-compatible rendering will have to opt in explicitly. We've previously discussed IE8's render mode a few times. Perhaps Opera's complaint to the EU or the EU's record antitrust fine had something to do with Redmond's about-face.

Comments

Huge assumption in the title

[Tumbleweed]

Let's make one thing clear - IE8 may be in standards-compliant MODE by default, but whether it's *standards-compliant* has yet to be proven. What Microsoft HAS proven (repeatedly) is that it considers compliance with standards to be a relative term. Only time will tell. I sure hope that they actually accomplish it this time; I'm tired.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Your.Master]

Compliance to standards is a relative term. No browser exists today that is completely compliant. What we can say is that this one appears to be more compliant than before -- it renders ACID2 at the very least (and probably does right everything IE7 did right).

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Phroggy]

What Microsoft HAS proven (repeatedly) is that it considers compliance with standards to be a relative term. So do all other browser makers. The various standards involved are non-trivial to implement, and as another poster commented, nobody has implemented all of them.

Just because a browser passes Acid2 doesn't mean it's "standards-compliant". It means it complies with the specific parts of the standards that Acid2 tests for, which is only a few things that most browsers (at the time Acid2 was created) got wrong.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Anonymous Coward]

> Compliance to standards is a relative term.

No, this statement is incorrect.

> No browser exists today that is completely compliant.

That is true. But it has no connection with the last statement.

I understand your point, and it's well taken, but you are introducing a tautology. Standards compliance is absolute, by _definition_.
Some attempts to comply with written standards may fail, and as such are not compliant. It may well be true that no browsers exist that are standards compliant, as the standards are written. However, please don't go waving around poisonous ideas like "standards compliance is a relative term".
Americans seem to have adopted a very lax relativism of late, a kind of fuzzy belief that everything is subjective. Some things are not. Some things are just facts that must be heeded. The definition is not up for negotiation, that's what _makes_ it a standard.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Craig Davison]

This is good news. The important thing is that MS is now saying they're willing to sacrifice backwards compatibility in IE. They have no reason not to follow the standards now (barring bugs or technical limitations).

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Merusdraconis]

That was true five years ago, but no longer. With the amount of competitive alternate browsers out there, and the new rise of the iMac, the standard is the W3C. While most web developers will put in extra effort to work around IE's bugs, they're starting from W3C-standard webpages and kludging in IE support, not (as it worked years ago) building pages that worked in IE first then trying to make them work on Netscape later if at all.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[mysticgoat]

Would you agree that a physical theory being "correct" is equivalent to a physical theory being "standards compliant" where the standard is reality?

No, I don't agree with that stipulation.

Reality is in its essence unknowable. Theories are models of reality that are simpler, and are based on a multitude of assumptions. And many of those assumptions go unstated. For instance, I am aware of no theory of gravity that takes into account the color of the objects being described, yet there is no scientific basis on which we can exclude color (or smell, or taste) from gravitational considerations. We do so because at this moment in history it seems silly to include it, but that is a literary arts judgment, not a scientific judgment. If you want to get your pet theory on Electric Pulse Gravity published, you'd do well to heed the literary aspects, but don't mistake them for the science.

A standard, however, is the formal statement of a group's conceptualization about a process, such as how a distance shall be measured, or how a web page shall be rendered. A standard has nothing to do with reality. It is all in your head (and the heads of everyone else who familiarizes themself with the standard). Because a standard is a human production that has no physical reality, it is possible to fully comply with its every detail (assuming that it is a well-written standard). Perhaps more to the point, it is possible for someone to completely learn a standard, including any of its weaknesses like internal contradictions or ambiguities. However it is impossible for anyone to completely learn reality, or learn all there is to know about any theory of reality.

In this sense, Euclidean geometry is a standard. You can do a lot of neat things with it, and you can spend lots of time exploring places where it is still ambiguous (things not yet proven). But you can't violate its established rules and still claim it is Euclidean geometry. You can replace those rules with other rules, but then you have a non-Euclidean geometry, like spherical geometry as one instance.

It is possible for a web browser to be standards compliant in the absolute sense. It is also reasonable to describe the relative compliance of non-compliant browsers. And since in nearly every case the context will make it clear as to whether the meaning is absolute or relative, there is no rarely any need to specify that. Unless, of course, one is pushing a hidden agenda, where the intent of talking about the subject is to create as much heat and smoke as possible while putting out no light.

There's probably a really succinct way of saying all the above, but I left my Zen Pocket Companion at work.

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[statusbar]

With respect to the http 1.1 standard, it _is_ relative...

From the standard:

The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [34].

When the people writing the standards write standards with the words "SHOULD" or "SHOULD NOT" or "RECOMMENDED" or "MAY" or "OPTIONAL" you now have a standard which can have many different faces, or compliance levels. IMHO, this is poor standards writing. They MUST make the specs using the terms "MUST" and "MUST NOT" and bump the version number. Then you can easily have automated unit tests which show absolute compliance. But we don't, and must rely on what developers "THINK" or "MAY NOT THINK" is correct about the spec.

--jeffk++

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[cp.tar]

More standard than IE7 isn't really a high bar to aim for though.

It is much higher than "more standard than IE6".

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[Your.Master]

[quote]yet there is no scientific basis on which we can exclude color (or smell, or taste) from gravitational considerations.[/quote]

Sure there are. For instance, parsimony. Repeated experimentation holds that these properties are pretty much unrelated to gravity*. Besides, other models that appear consistent seem to adequately explain colour and smell and taste in ways that are incompatible by virtue scale with consistent gravitational theory.

Anyway, I recognize and respect your distinction here, although I do think it's hypothetically possible to come up with a model for reality accurate in every respect, we can just never truly comprehensively know that we have found the answer. That's neither provable nor disprovable, and thus, neither here nor there.

But I agree that context makes things clear pretty much always. If you look at the original context of my statement, he first used compliance as an absolute term, then declared that Microsoft viewed it as relative. I argue that the relative interpretation is quite valid. As for the hidden agenda, I don't think any of us (you, me, the guy I originally responded to, the Anonymous Coward in between) was pushing any hidden agenda, so I don't know where that came from.

I apologize if I looked like I was pedantically claiming that the absolute interpretation was invalid and retract any implication thereof. From my perspective, the person I responded to was saying that the relative interpretation was invalid, and the guy who responded to me agreed with absolutism-only.

* pigments for colours are slightly different composition, smells are different aromatic molecules, taste from that and other factors; all of which can reflect subtle molecular differences that lead to different mass per molecule which can in turn lead to different gravitational forces. Let's not analyse that one too deeply :).

Re:Huge assumption in the title

[strikethree]

There is a world of difference between not fully implementing a standard and doing something against the standard.

strike

Put it all on Silverlight!?!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I wonder if they're serious. Will they really be standards compliant enough so that I don't have to hack around IE8's deficiencies? Will this still be true for IE9? It's possible. Will this include SVG and XHTML and CSS3? What about XUL and HTML 5?

If all of the above work in the next couple of version of IE, do you know what that would indicate to me? That would indicate that Microsoft is betting on Silverlight to lock in users in the next 5 years... because they've pretty much convinced me they will never compete based upon features and the merits of their software, rather than trying to make it as hard as possible for users to switch to anything else.

Re:Hmmmm

[garett_spencley]

Competition is good. If Microsoft actually goes and creates a superior product then IE users get a better browser which forces Firefox to either "up it's game" (giving FF users an even better browser) or remain the same while everyone switches back to IE because it's superior.

Either way everyone gets a better browser. Win-win.

Developers & the half-life of accumulated cont

[weston]

Developers, developers, developers, right?

I think Microsoft has finally genuinely started to realize a very simple fact:

Client-side web developers hate them.

And it's probably the one thing MS has thoroughly earned with all the IE bullsh*t over the last 10 years.

This is a really great gesture, it's a good start if they want to allay any of that and gain back trust. But honestly, nobody gets over 10 years of being treated like crap overnight, and the half-life of contempt isn't short.

Personally, I'd like to offer my congratulations to the IE Product management team, and let them know that in time, I'll probably only wish debilitating terminal illness on them, rather than painful and extended death by torture.

Re:Hmmmm

[Your.Master]

You just totally missed his point. If, hypothetically, IE8 is in some way better than Firefox on Windows, Firefox will have adapt to compete. This will help Firefox on Ubuntu, because Firefox is competing with IE in the marketplace, even if it is not competing on your OS of choice.

Re:I don't care about IE at all

[Khuffie]

Not sure about your part of the world, but where I live, quitting a job due to having to use IE for a payroll site is...stupid. Choice of employment is not up to the individual. If it were, I'd be "that-guy-that-sits-on-his-ass-playing-videogames-and-getting-paid-millions".