Microsoft.com Makes IE8 Incompatibility List

nickull writes "Microsoft is tracking incompatible Web sites for its upcoming Internet Explorer 8 browser and has posted a list that now contains about 2,400 names — including Microsoft.com. Apparently, even though Microsoft's IE8 team is doing the 'right' thing by finally making IE more standards-compliant, they are risking 'breaking the Web' because the vast majority of Web sites are still written to work correctly with previous, non-standards-compliant versions of IE."

Comments

Options

[Anonymous Showered]

What if we could just define which rendering engine to use in pages, e.g. IE7 or IE8 in a meta tag...

Re:Options

[should_be_linear]

or, perhaps, fixing those pages comes to mind...

Re:Options

[nmb3000]

What if we could just define which rendering engine to use in pages, e.g. IE7 or IE8 in a meta tag...

Oh if we only could!

Watching the development of IE8, the teams is taking great pains to make sure that site authors and owners have an overall say about how their page is rendered with respect to new IE standards-compliance. You can use both a META tag as well as a HTTP header to tell IE8 to use either the new rendering engine (default) or to fall back to the IE7 standards. Companies can also specify compatibility options using GPOs which should help keep older intranet sites working.

I think it's a pretty good tradeoff between pushing for modern standards and not "breaking the web". Yes, it is largely IE's fault that there are so many non-conforming sites out there, but compatibility is important regardless, especially for "offline" sites which cannot be fixed easily or cheaply (CD help files, embedded web servers, etc). At least by having the new rendering mode the default it will encourage standards compliance (or at least IE's [admittedly improving] version of it.)

Re:Options

[techno-vampire]

the IE7 standards

Isn't that a contradiction in terms? The whole problem with IE7 is, it's not standards compliant.

Re:Options

[JamesRose]

Yeah, let me know how telling people to do hours of work for free goes for you....

Re:Options

[duguk]

I was testing my *new* site in IE8 yesterday, I'm using the "

Re:Options

[NotBornYesterday]

Bill Microsoft, of course.

Re:Options

[BSDimwit]

Who says anything has to be done for free. Consider this Microsoft's contribution to the economic stimulus package.

Re:Options

[Anonymous Coward]

Calling all kettles, Calling all kettles, Pot to Black do you read me? I Read you Pot - lets go paint the pans, they're starting to get wise.

Re:Options

[itamihn]

Bill Microsoft, of course.

Bill Gates

Re:Options

[fireman sam]

That all depends on who's standards IE7 is being compared to. IE7 is not standards compliant when compared to the w3 standard, but is VERY compliant when compared to the MS standard.

Re:Options

[PitaBred]

IE7 doesn't measure up to w3c standards, but it's a de facto "standard" nontheless. People wrote lots of websites to deal with the way IE7 renders pages.

Re:Options

[duguk]

I absolutely agree, for some nice looking drop down menus, however - it's impossible to avoid the "if ie" tag. I wish I didn't have to use them (and wish I didn't have to sacrifice decent code for looks and design).

As I mentioned originally though, this is for a drop down menu using ul/li and the hover psudeocode. I can't find any way to do this that works nicer, and avoids using javascript. The "if ie" tag I'm using is non-essential and the site still works without it. However, to make it looks best it's hard to avoid these.

At least its better than some of the old css tricks with invalid code - the "if ie" syntax is W3C valid code.

Re:Options

[rrohbeck]

Looks like you just found a reliable way to detect IE8.

Re:Options

[Hurricane78]

No it is not. You apparently never tried to program a real web application to work in that thing.

It contradicts its own rules, based on random things like race conditions between the first execution of JavaScript in an <IFRAME> and the end of page the rendering routine.
Been there, seen it, circumvented stuff like that in anything from 2 minutes to no less than two weeks of hard debugging.

In the matrix of IE, you only have to remember one thing: There is no standard.
Everything can change, and change back in the blink of an eye, for no reason at all.

I fear that to be a Trident developer, you must be a genius to understand that mess, and crazy to stand it, at the same time.

Re:Options

[Tweenk]

So what should I use?? "if IE" comments are the cleanest solution for IE woes. Using them you can make your sites both standards compliant AND hack-free.

"Conditional comments" are perfect for linking to an additional style sheet that makes the site look decent in IE. They are the simplest and most reliable method of serving CSS/Javascript fixes, and they are W3C complaint (see this site: www.baltchem.eu - it uses those tags and is still valid XHTML 1.0 Strict).

Re:Options

[commodoresloat]

This is exactly right. I don't know why but this company seems to be doing everything ass backwards and still getting away with it. I work at a very large organization, and a lot of Office documents get sent back and forth on email. Most people have not "upgraded" to the latest version of office (2007/8). The few who have send everything in the new xml format (docx etc), which is not compatible with older versions. This is annoying as hell when I have to explain that Word is incompatible with Word, or Excel is incompatible with Excel. Thankfully there are tools on the microsoft site that can convert these documents, but there is no reason people should have to jump through these hoops. Even worse, these programs have expiration dates -- just today I tried to open a docx document and was told the program had expired. I had to go to the MS website and download a minor point upgrade to the converter program (the link was hidden on a page that was mostly about Microsoft Messenger. Then I ran the program and it told me to quit Entourage, Word, and Excel - each of which had about 10 windows open - just so I could update this external application. Even as I'm typing this I just realized there is yet another minor point update on the website, so I'll need to upgrade to 1.0.2 now. What a nightmare.

Here's another example of this sort of nonsense -- if you own MS Office 2004 for OS X, it has been updated to 11.5.3. But you can't just update from version 10 to version 11.5.3 in one swoop. If you installed Office years ago and kept it up to date it's a minor nuisance but if you're installing Office 2004 on a new computer, you need to use AutoUpdate like 15 times to get it up to date, one point upgrade at a time. Seriously, who has time for this nonsense? And who thinks up this crap?

Re:Options

[Anthony_Cargile]

Yes they are, you just dislike them to the point where you want to run around screaming to the top of your lungs and hitting everything with your fists till they turn bloody, then you fall down and whimper yourself to sleep while murmuring "damn proprietary standards... I hate you!"

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Options

[tuxgeek]

I have a better idea
Let M$ build a browser that is W3C compliant.
Then all the webmasters out there can make their sites W3C compliant.

Now, see how easy that was?
Complying with standards, what a concept

Re:Options

[malkir]

But, what would that do to all the noobsauces on IE6-7 who don't know what a better browser is? Bill Microsoft.

Re:Options

[D'Sphitz]

I believe that's exactly what they're doing, you will be able to add a tag to your website to use a compatibility mode which is supposed to fix pages that don't work correctly in IE8.

Re:Options

[eikonos]

they deserve to go down with the ship they hitched their trailers to

This takes the car analogy in a whole new direction... the aquacar.

Re:Options

[ScottCooperDotNet]

So no one setup the GPOs to have Office 2007 save in "compatible mode" by default?

Re:Options

[warrigal]

It wasn't just that they built websites that catered for IE's shortcomings; you can arrive at one of these sites in your standards-compliant browser only to have the site further Microsoft's agenda by telling you that you can't view the site with your "incompatible" browser. You are told that you must use IE. Tough if you're running OSX or Linux.

Re:Options

[Firehed]

Why not try changing your "if ie" to "if lte ie7" and stop confusing the hell out of the poor thing? Unless you've done some bizarre javascript (please tell me you're using one of the plethora of fully-cross-browser libraries!), this shouldn't really be an issue. At least not a significant one - it may not be pixel-perfect, but easily close enough. My brief testing in IE8 has it rendering stuff just as well as Firefox or Safari.

I realize that it's not always (read: almost never) an option with CSS, but it's far better if you can avoid browser-specific conditions by other means. For instance, you can check if a recent JS/DOM method exists (getElementsByClassName, for instance), use it if so, otherwise revert to your fallback/ugly/slow code. If/when the browser gets the method in question (not that it's at all likely, but what if MS patched some of the flaws in IE6/7?), your code will automatically use the better version without you having to touch it after the fact, and no browser sniffing.

Re:Options

[mcgrew]

A non standards-compliant web page isn't hard to write. If goobers would stop writing their web pages to impress people with their 133t sk1LLz (Yahoo news comes to mind) and make them clean and standards-compliant in the first place, there wouldn't be these issues.

If your site isn't compliant in the first place, you have no right to bitch about "working for free". If I screw up a project at work, I have to redo it. And if your site isn't compliant in the first place, you screwed up.

Suck it up and fix it. Next time, do it right.

Fuck IE

[jollyreaper]

It can't even render simple fucking HTML properly. Simple little html table, written according to the guidelines. Looks spiff in Firefox, unholy mess in IE. The only way to make things line up properly in IE is to do illegal things that are correctly rendered as incompetent ass in Firefox.

Fuck IE and the modem it was downloaded on.

Re:Fuck IE

[hubert.lepicki]

Sorry, but which screenshot are you asking for? IE8 displaying elements not valid way, or that guy who posted original comment, doing activity with title of his post.

Where's the story?

[AKAImBatman]

I don't get it. Why is everyone so surprised by this? Microsoft has been the biggest consumer of their own non-standard web technologies in both an effort to tie services to Windows and to convince other web developers to use their 'neato' technologies.

Has no one ever noticed that Microsoft.com had various effects, direct system access, and other features not found anywhere else on the web? Or that Windows Update only worked through Internet Explorer? Microsoft WANTS to be as non-standard as possible. And if you don't believe me, check out this wonderful document penned by none other than Bill Gates himself:

One thing we have got to change in our strategy -- allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company.

We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities.

Re:Where's the story?

[techno-vampire]

Or that Windows Update only worked through Internet Explorer?

Well, what else do you expect? Windows Update works by taking advantage of a major security hole known as "ActiveX," and IE is the only browser that doesn't block it.

Re:Where's the story?

[spuke4000]

The real story is not that microsoft.com is on the list, it's all the other sites. Ostensibly this is a list of sites that are not standards compliant, which IE8 will treat in as non-standard so they display correctly. But if you check the list you'll find wikipedia.org, google.com, mozilla.com(!!). Are these sites really non-compliant? Or is IE8 just incompatible with them?

Re:Where's the story?

[AKAImBatman]

http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/plugin.htm

Lord only knows why that even exists...

Re:Where's the story?

[Dionysus]

validating Google.com. Don't think google ever tried to be compliant.

Re:Where's the story?

[TBerben]

According to the W3C validator Mozilla.org passes with 1 warning, Wikipedia.org passes with flying colours but Google.com fails miserably with 65 errors.

Re:Where's the story?

[gazbo]

That is a truly shocking email. And if it were 10 years ago it may even be slightly relevant.

Re:Where's the story?

[Anonymous Coward]

They were at some point, if i remember correct.
But since they added in all the JavaScript fuctionality, things got "broken".

While i can forgive most of the errors in there, but this one in particular is pretty damn shocking in my eyes.
Line 3, Column 2223: an attribute value must be a literal unless it contains only name characters
...om/maps?hl=en&tab=wl" onclick=gbar.qs(this) class=gb1>Maps a href="http:
Really?! Yes, usually a ; would end that, but since a bracket with a space was found, that is taken as the end, but seriously, that's just crazy, it makes my brain cells scream.
In fact, all the attributes not being in quotes are pretty damn bad.

Surprised they haven't fixed that, kinda saddening seeing Google leave it like that.
It won't exactly add that much more to the download speed, their site is already tiny, 56k could handle it reasonably well.

Re:Where's the story?

[BitZtream]

Look, you can talk about bad security all you want, but the only difference between ActiveX and an xpcom plugin in firefox is that ActiveX would auto-install. Other than the fact that IE allows/allowed for auto installs, the two technologies are practically identical.

The problem is not ActiveX, its that IE would automatically install them. Then they made it prompt by default (it was always an option) before installing, but most users blindly click whatever they think will get them the free prize. Then they started with the unsigned warnings, but nothing was signed initially, so that was useless for a while, which again trained users to ignore it. Of course the fact that signed doesn't mean it wasn't signed by a bad guy, and since no own really does anything to the bad guys, they just make sure they are signed and go on.

I could list probably 20 things that could be changed that would have made ActiveX components not a threat, and none of those changes would actually involve changing an ActiveX component or the API in any way.

If you prevent IE from installing ActiveX components on its own you are functionally equivalent to Firefox. That doesn't mean that you can't be exploited via a bug in the browser which allows for an unauthorized install, nor does it protect you from installed components that have exploits which have not yet be found. Those problems effect Firefox as well.

Make a way for Firefox to have a page automatically install an extension and you've got the exact same problem.

Note: I pick on Firefox here because I've developed plugins for Firefox and IE. I do not use Opera, nor do I have any experience with Chrome plugins so I really can't comment as to how they may handle things differently.

Also I'm not saying you should use IE or that ActiveX is great. IE and ActiveX are crap for to many reasons to list here, but many of those same problems apply to the Firefox/XULRunner/XPCOM world as well, fortunately they just tend to be something you can fix in OSS software which takes away a lot of the validity of developers bitching about bad code, they should just fix it themselves :)

Re:Where's the story?

[Blakey Rat]

Has no one ever noticed that Microsoft.com had various effects, direct system access, and other features not found anywhere else on the web?

Not really, no.

Or that Windows Update only worked through Internet Explorer?

Windows Update has been a freakin' Control Panel and Service in Windows for a decade now. Please update the rhetoric to the 21st century, thank you.

Yes, the web-based Windows Update still works. Yes, it requires IE. That's because IE is the only browser that ever implemented ActiveX. But the thing is, HTML was/is *designed* so that companies can extend it! (That's why HTML ignores tags it doesn't understand, for example.) ActiveX was fairly extended in the correct manner prescribed by HTML. Is it a good technology? No. Does it violate the HTML standards? Also no. Is there any technical reason Firefox can't implement ActiveX? No.

Re:Where's the story?

[Bill Dog]

While testing a socket helper class I was writing about a year and a half ago, I noticed that the Google homepage's entire direct content (i.e. excluding content like their logo, which the browser fetches in a separate request (and which will be cached for visits thereafter)) always arrived in a single TCP/IP packet. I assumed that this was on purpose, by the following reasoning:

• This bypasses the possibility of the rendering of a partially downloaded web page. A user who sees part of the page there but it's still not yet in a state where they can begin to use it will likely think it's due to slowness on that web site's end. (I.e. they'll be mad at Google.)
• In any delay in loading that first packet, even if on the web site end, because users don't see anything yet, they're likely to assume they're just experiencing a slow connection for some indeterminate reason, and assign blame to their ISP or the Internet in general.

So if all of Google's main page content still fits in the 1500 or so byte limit, then they prolly indeed are dropping characters here and there and violating standards, as long as it still renders properly, to maintain that snappy response we're used to when going to Google. In other words, I think Google's characteristically spartan home page was not only about the look, but the look and feel. Pretty smart.

Re:Where's the story?

[tobiasly]

Look, you can talk about bad security all you want, but the only difference between ActiveX and an xpcom plugin in firefox is that ActiveX would auto-install. Other than the fact that IE allows/allowed for auto installs, the two technologies are practically identical.

The problem is not ActiveX, its that IE would automatically install them.

No, the problem is that Microsoft promoted ActiveX as a way for web developers to add extra functionality to their sites. Their goals were to compete with Java and lock users and web developers into IE and Windows. The auto-install bit is only a side effect of that, so that the user experience would be as seamless as possible, security be damned.

So now there are still lots of sites (especially on large intranets) that require ActiveX for some business-essential functionality. I guess Microsoft succeeded to some degree in that these companies can never move from IE.

By contrast, Mozilla never promoted XPCom extensions as something that should be added to a website. In fact by default you can no longer install an extension from anywhere besides the official Mozilla Add-Ons -- Mozilla intentionally makes it more difficult to do this.

So yes, from a technical perspective they both allow native code to be executed on the system but the point is that Microsoft wanted everyone to use ActiveX as widely as possible instead of reserving it only as a means of adding functionality to the browser itself.

Google.com?!

[kramulous]

I'm no web developer but how can google.com be on that list as well? It is one of the simplest websites around. A text field, few links and a bit of javascript.

How the hell can a web browser, that let's face it, is probably going to be the dominant web browser, not render that.

No wonder the general population get pissed of with 'the computer's not working again'. These days I tell them that I don't know Windows. I'm going to have to start walking around with a Ubuntu live on USB.

Re:Google.com?!

[snowgirl]

I'm no web developer but how can google.com be on that list as well? It is one of the simplest websites around. A text field, few links and a bit of javascript.

The problem here is that Microsoft released a list of domains that are not properly supported, and the list contains one entry: "*.*"

Re:Google.com?!

[duguk]

...the list contains one entry: "*.*"

At least my intranet site will be ok then :o)

Re:Google.com?!

[ionix5891]

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://www.google.com/&charset=(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0

Re:Google.com?!

[psyclone]

If it is raw bandwidth on the main page and even the search results page they are concerned about, Google could store their inline CSS and javascript externally. The browser and proxy cache savings would be more than enough to make up for adding the doctype and standards code.

Personally I don't think Google cares enough to make their documents W3C standards compliant. But as long as everyone's browser works on it, no end user will care. (Someone writing a rendering engine might be annoyed.)

Re:Google.com?!

[pgn674]

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://slashdot.org

Re:Google.com?!

[brentonboy]

Actually, Google isn't as simple as you think. Example: view one of the images (on the results page, not the homepage). The Google logo or one of the arrows or something. They are all this same image: http://www.google.com/images/nav_logo4.png How do you think they get all those different images while only loading one image? The simplicity is simple, but there is tons of really complicated stuff going on on the Google front end.

Re:Google.com?!

[brentonboy]

For starters, no !DOCTYPE.

It does have a doctype: {!doctype html}

It may look unfamiliar to you because that's the HTML 5 doctype.

Re:Google.com?!

[Hal_Porter]

That reminds me of this article on CSS sprites

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/css-sprites/

The idea is that you groupt a bunch of small images into one large one and use background-position to select the right one.

Breaking IE-specific sites is a GOOD thing

[kbrasee]

The worst thing on the internet is a site that only works in IE. I just ran across one the other day that displayed nothing but a blank screen in Firefox and Chrome. There are many more that have crazy formatting issues in anything but IE. So, this is a good way to force these sites to update from their 1997 crapfest to the standardized modern web.

Re:Breaking IE-specific sites is a GOOD thing

[CrazyTalk]

but...what about my Mac?

Rock and a Hard Place

[Toreo asesino]

So slashdot, what should it be?

Break standards and keep compatibility? Or break compatibility and be standards compliant?

Either way they'll be unpopular it appears. At least in the short-term.

Re:Rock and a Hard Place

[Joce640k]

One of the two will make them unpopular in the long term.

Broken or not...

[innerweb]

If finally coming into compliance is what they are doing, then, Duh! By default the sites that are built for the not-compatible versions are going to be broken. I think it is wonderful. If Microsoft comes into compliance and renders web pages by the book (the W3C standard), then it is a great thing for all. Having broken sites is the price that companies pay for jumping on the bandwagon when they had the choice to do the right thing or not.

Consider broken sites a small price to pay going forward to gain real compatibility and a much better web. Less time spent developing around the broken browsers means more time spent building true content - maybe even more time on better security.

InnerWeb

Re:Broken or not...

[mc1138]

Right on, maybe we'll see fewer sites coming back saying that you have to be using IE or it won't work. Trust me lots of places especially banks still do this.

Oh great

[moria]

Now web developers will need to test two more assuredly incompatible browsers, IE8 standards mode and IE8 compatibility mode!

The web is already broken thanks to IE

[Dracos]

Microsoft's stance that fixing IE will break the web is counter intuitive propaganda. They broke the web when they failed to keep IE's standards compliance up to date, and since they strong-armed themselves to the top of the browser share pile, much of the web is built to satisfy their flawed implementation.

MS is giving that chunk of the web an incentive to fix itself... it's already broken.

If MS would approach this with some humility and logic, more people would understand that it's not the sites that are broken, it's the blue E.

MS made their own internet (standards)

[Anna Merikin]

About ten years ago, as Web-1.0 was beginning, I decided to learn to write HTML for a personal website. At that time, MS released a beta program (I forget its name) to automate HTML authoring and I signed up, downloaded and installed it. Then I found its output while great for IE, did not render pages well in Netscape or even Opera. So I uninstalled it and wrote with WordPerfect-7, correcting the code by hand.

Some weeks later, MS emailed me (the beta program, of course, required registration with an email address) with a special offer: a free year-long subscription to an upcoming MS magazine if I would document my use of a feature on my home web page that worked under IE but not under Netscape -- that is, I would get a worthless pile of MS propaganda every month if I would break web standards to the benefit of IE.

It was always MS' plan to dominate ("embrace and extend" was what is was called then) the internet.

I believe if there was one event that caused them to change their minds and become web-standard compliant it was their losing fight with the EU monopoly courts and their punishment: to become standards-compliant with respect to APIs, networking and, apparently, at least in MS' mind, the internet as well.

Perhpas MS could take a feature from the Opera browser -- user agent spoofing, and let IE-8 users impersonate another brand so they can view standards-compliant sites as the designer intended them to be seen.

Standards-Compliance Practically Useful After All

[RAMMS EIN]

``the vast majority of Web sites are still written to work correctly with previous, non-standards-compliant versions of IE.''

Which wouldn't be a Bad Thing if the sites were also standards compliant. However, it seems that I have been part of a very small minority of people who have cared to make them that way in the past decade. Even today, the prevalent attitude seems to be that you "support" one or two browsers, instead of keeping to standards and having your site Just Work in every decent browser.

Big Organization = this kind of thing happens

[zindorsky]

This is just a simple case of The Left Hand Doesn't Know What The Right Hand Is Doing.

Seriously, in any organization of Microsoft's size, these type of things will happen.

I'll bet that the guys developing IE8 really want to make it 100% standards-complaint, but the web developers dudes didn't get the memo. (Or more sinisterly, there are forces in Redmond whose interests do not lie that way.)

Re:Poll time!

[duckInferno]

No time wasting options = not a real poll

Fixed that for you!

[Giant Electronic Bra]

"Apparently, even though Microsoft's IE8 team is doing the 'right' thing by finally making IE more standards-compliant, they are risking 'fixing the Web' because the vast majority of Web sites are still written to work incorrectly with previous, non-standards-compliant versions of IE."

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Thank you, Microsoft!

[CopaceticOpus]

Microsoft had two choices:

1. Continue rendering sites in the same broken way as previous versions of IE, making life a real pain for web developers.
2. Render sites properly, making things better in the long run, but taking a public relations hit in the process.

Amazingly, they chose the second option. Those of us who understand why this is important should be applauding right now.

Re:Thank you, Microsoft!

[tobiasly]

Exactly. People can whine "well they shouldn't have broken the web in the first place" all they want, and while I agree with that sentiment, it doesn't change the fact that we are where we are and need to move forward. I think the approach they're taking is the best possible one.

Google should win a prize

[iYk6]

It's funny you mention that. I have always been amazed at Google's capacity for error. In 4 lines of HTML, on the very simple page you mention, Google has managed to fit 65 errors and 8 warnings. Sibling poster has a link to the w3c validator.

Easy fix

[MobyDisk]

The problem is that many sites will check if the browser is IE, and then do various workarounds. So Microsoft is stuck: they can fix the browser, but then the sites have to be modified to say (if browser is IE, but version 7 then do the hack)

I think the only good workaround would be for Microsoft to change their user/agent string so it reports itself as Firefox :)

The list seems accurate

[psyclone]

I've checked the main page at a few of them including:
  tom.com
  qq.com
  mozilla.com
  google.com
  wikipedia.org

They seem to either:
  1) Fail w3c [x]html standards
  2) Fail w3c css standards

Google's rarely been standards compliant, failing to publish doctypes. Even if they did, many of their pages are built with javascript which do not create w3c-valid documents either. (But that goes for most javascript toolkits.)

Mozilla uses several "-moz" prefixed CSS attributes that are not w3c either. Even Wikipedia has a minor CSS error.

Comparing websites to a standard depends on the standard. Microsoft doesn't have to write or test IE8 to the W3C's standards, but it would be great if they did. How many of the mainstream browsers even pass the ACID tests (v2 & 3)?

I think that microsoft.com being on the list shows a changing side to Microsoft. They may never be the friend of free and open source software, but everyone would appreciate Microsoft adhering to an open and popular standard. Of course they will always have their own quirks and extras beyond any standard, but raw web development could become pleasant again.

Re:Firefox and Opera work 99.9% 0f the time

[Mystra_x64]

MSIE need to change it's UserAgent ID and CC-rules. Name themselves something new and be done with that. Simple as that.

Depends on the standard and the test

[psyclone]

IE8 passes ACID 2:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2007/12/19/internet-explorer-8-and-acid2-a-milestone.aspx

But in September, IE8 lags in the ACID 3 test:

http://www.anomalousanomaly.com/2008/03/06/acid-3/

The closer they all get to standards (any standards) the better.

Re:Depends on the standard and the test

[SanityInAnarchy]

Keep in mind, ACID is not a comprehensive test of standards-compliance, by any stretch. It is specifically targeting places where certain browsers are known to lag behind in compliance.

But it is worth noting that there does not seem to be a single standard test, objective or subjective, in which IE is ahead of other browsers in standards-compliance.

Standard IE8 worthless

[dave562]

I've been using IE8 for a couple of months and have been staying on top of the beta releases. The browser is pretty much worthless unless I put it into "compatibility mode". It doesn't work with my banking sites. It doesn't work right with Gmail, even in compatibility mode. It doesn't work on Slashdot. It barely works anywhere. So either a good portion of the internet isn't coded to standard, or the IE8 interpretation of the standard is borked.

Re:Standard IE8 worthless

[Shados]

You have your answer there:

"It doesn't work right with Gmail, even in compatibility mode"

That means its doing user agent sniffing and going from that, and isn't made to go with a newer version... Compatibility mode is pretty much exactly IE7's rendering engine. So if it doesn't work, well...

Re:Do we really want a standards compliant browser

[palegray.net]

Do we really want a fully standards compliant Microsoft Browser? How can the next wave of standards be developed then?

Yes, we do want a full compliant Microsoft browser? This will have absolutely no impact on the development of new web standards to extend what we already have.

"Now, why would Linux users want to go to..."

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now, why would Linux users want to go to the Windows Update site anyway?"

Are you kidding? It drives me bat guano nuts when I CAN'T download Windows updates/patches from
LINUX/Firefox. Just because I have one machine with say Vista/MS Office why should I have to use IE and FFS pass some stupid WGA/OGA test just to download patches for things that shouldn't have been broken in the first place!

* Because I'm a sysadmin for multiple machines.

* Because I prefer to use LINUX/UNIX when at all possible.

* Because it is very reasonable to use ANOTHER PC to download updates/fixes for machines that ARE NOT on / online / available / working. Burn them to CD or copy them to the LAN or flash disc and you can update them when locally convenient. Actually most "critical" PCs aren't connected to the internet AT ALL by organizational security policy, hence they have to have their updates pulled from another machine.

* Because when I *most* want to see / download Windows Updates / security alerts / bulletins / patches is *exactly* in the situation when my Windows boxes are in danger of being 0wn3d by the unpatched remote code execution vulnerability of the month and I don't DARE connect them to the internet until the problems are identified / analyzed / understood / patched. Typically a lot of Windows based computer malware actively PREVENTS you from updating / patching the box or its virus definitions, et. al. If a Windows host is infected/vulnerable you have to worry about it being susceptable to more / initial infections by bringing it online especially via the IE browser.

* Because for instance Microsoft's download center helpfully offers downloads like monthly CD ISO image security updates or various other tools / documents in ISO image format. Oops MS Windows HAS no official built in capability WHATSOEVER to burn Microsoft's own ISO images to CD/DVD or to extract/mount them. Whereas if I download them on UNIX I'll have them burning in about 20 seconds and the images loopback filesystem mounted for sharing over SAMBA/CIFS to the LAN using perfectly standard built in utilities.

* Because for instance Microsoft has no built in capability to do things like MD5/SHA1/GPG verify the various downloads for which hashes / signatures are available, whereas it takes about 10 seconds with standard tools on UNIX.

* Because even on NTFS with Windows you typically run into stunningly brain dead limitations like 128 character path name limitations, and also a lot of the download/filesystem utilities are pretty bad about preserving file/directory creation/modification times. So if I'm trying to be organized and actually store information about WHERE/WHEN I've downloaded a given update I need UNIX tools/filesystems for best success. This is relevant since [thank you Microsoft!] they typically have no good / simple way based on filename or standard metadata to identify WHAT revision/version/platform a given patch is for, or even necessarily what KB/issue it is relevant to. You can end up with a lot of brain damaged "SETUP.EXE" downloads from microsoft and you'll forever be wondering "What's that?" "Why do I want it?" "Is it even the most recent version?", hence you need to manage the files in the filesystem which, as aforementioned, is much more difficult on FAT32/NTFS/Windows than LINUX.

* Because typically you don't find standard tools like download managers / bandwidth control utilities et. al. on Windows, though of course they're available as 3rd party tools. firefox, wget, curl, et.al. are better for UNIX than Windows.

e.g.: /home/sysadmin/2009-01-30-Microsoft/Windows_7_Beta_7000.0.081212-1400/download.microsoft.com/download/6/3/3/633118BD-6C3D-45A4-B985-F0FDFFE1B021/EN/7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULXFRE_EN_DVD.ISO ...illustrates nicely the problems with (a) ISO images, (b) 128 character path limits, (c) preserving metadata information about the date/source of the download that just doesn't happen on Windows, et. al.