IE8 to Use Standards Mode by Default
Big news coming out of the IEBlog today from Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager of Internet Explorer. He has announced that, contrary to earlier proposals stating that IE8 would use the opt-in method for standards support, it will now be supporting IE8 Standards Mode by default. This is due to the original community backlash against the opt-in proposal to some degree but also due to Microsoft’s policy towards interoperability on the web. In short, they feel that supporting IE8 Standards Mode out of the box is the right thing to do in the long run. If a site wishes to opt-in to IE7 Standards Mode they can do that using the meta tag mentioned earlier.
Why is this a good thing? Its the result of a cohesive conversation between Microsoft, a company perceived to be a monopoly in our industry, and the grass roots developers and designers who believe in best practise. By that I mean we’re the one percent of designers out there who are willing to create quality best practice professional products for the web. That Microsoft has finally come to the party (and in my opinion this announcement places them in the good guys’ and girls’ camp without a doubt). Yes I know IE7 kind of fizzed but that was yesterday… tomorrow is a brave new world.
I picked up the news via Molly Holzschlag’s blog, by the way, as she’s heavily associated over the last few years with the IE team so she’s really the horse’s mouth on this subject for news breaks.
There are a whole bunch of reasons why we should be happy today with this announcement which I won’t go into specifically. Others will write about that stuff more elegantly I’m sure. Me, I’m happy to not have the few beers that this really deserves.
PS. I know there are anti-Microsoft anti-fanboys out there who smote all news Microsoft. These guys will never be satisfied. For the rest of us we can look forward to IE8 as a decent browser worth supporting. Let’s face it market share is market share. Business dictates we develop for their browser. So today I am very happy. Very.
Update: 5 March, 2008
I think Roger Johansson’s post says about as much on the truely flabbergasted web standards front as necessary - Surprise of the year: IE8 will use Standards mode by default. And Robert Nyman’s IE 8 will use Standards Mode as the default rendering.
