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Site Compatibility and IE8

Posted by Soulskill on from the same-but-different dept.

Kelson writes "As the release of Internet Explorer 8 approaches, Microsoft's IE Team has published a list of differences between IE7 and IE8, and how to fix code so that it will work on both. Most of the page focuses on IE8 Standards mode, but it also turns out that IE7 compatibility mode isn't quite the same as IE7 itself."

4 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Target a standard by Samschnooks · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Agreed.

    And at the bottom of your web page, instead of having some non-sense such as "This page best viewed with IEx", have something that says, "Page best viewed with standards compliant browsers, such as X,Y, and Z".

  2. Re:Target a standard by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

    I haven't ever seen a fast Java applet

    This is a temporary problem. As computers get faster, this problem will go away.

  3. Re:I say forget IE by Samschnooks · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I would suggest, if I may, that instead you show the web page without IE specific code showing all its ugliness and with a message that states that IE isn't standards compliant, you don't have the resources to code around IE's hacks, and that the user would be best served by Firefox, Opera, or Chrome.

    This accomplishes two things: one, it shows that their browser isn't that good, and two, it shows other browsers are available and lastly, it doesn't just throw those folks out - otherwise, they'll just move on; unless you're the coder for the Wall Street Journal or some other website where the viewers are captive.

  4. Re:Target a standard by FuzzyBad-Mofo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    HTML rendering is actually pretty consistent among standards compliant browsers (Firefox, Safari, Chrome & Opera). The problem is that the largest browser vendor by marketshare (Microsoft) has a poor history of standards compliance; rather they ignore parts of standards for their own proprietary implementations, which change from version to version.

    This has caused Microsoft their current position, where it becomes difficult for new versions of their browser to match the quirks and partial standards compliance of the past versions. It's hard to remove features from a browser when a popular site coded years ago is still using them. In essence, they have painted themselves into a corner.

    The problem is not in HTML, the problem is the long term effect of proprietary technology instead of standards compliance. Vendor-owned technologies such as Flash or Silverlight are not the answer, in fact they're characteristic of the problem!