IE8 Blacklists Domains to IE7 Rendering
Do you want to know why I don’t like being a web designer? It’s the PANTS factor (we’re not saying fuck today just PANTS). The pants factor involves trolls, assholes, petty disputes and Microsoft Internet Explorer version whatever. So IE8, in a flip flop worthy of the Olympic Games, has invented a new way to make our lives difficult while at the same time screwing us with a chopstick in the back. Fucken pants! There, I said it.
So what’s the issue? You might like the isolani detailed rant about this one, the Robert Nyman link to isolani but with comments enabled, or you could just settle for my very brief pants, pants, pants – it’s happened again.
You see, about a year ago we had this big argument with Microsoft when they wanted us to opt into a standards rendering mode in IE8. We kicked, screamed and did a little spitting as a community and they backed down. We shouldn’t have to opt in to web standards. Right?
So, in the Microsoft way, they’ve invented a new fantastic feature that gives us a good two finger web standards gesture to get PANTSED… kind of like the archers used to do to show they still had their fingers. It’s called a Compatability View Button in IE8 that allows the traffic to determine whether your site gets put on a compatability mode setting for IE7 rendering. Bad enough, but it’s not even the same as the real IE7 so you have to develop for another PANTS Microsoft browser, too. PANTS. Did I say PANTS enough yet? No? OK, and it PANTS targets top level domains. PANTS.
OK, so what if we all decided to have a bit of a lark and go to a site and we all start clicking this Compatability Mode Button? What if people’s curiosity simply entices them to have a look, try it, click it for no other reason than to click it? Can you see the inherent danger in that one? You build an IE8 compatable web standards site and it gets put onto a blacklist that means it will be rendered as IE7 – OUCH. I can feel that right in the seat of my PANTSING pants.
So thank PANTS we have Microsoft to shake hands with (et tu Brutus). Is this industry doing a Sopranos pantomime, by any chance? You see, all this PANTS in the industry is exactly why there’s so much unhappiness and angst. It shouldn’t be this way. What was so hard about just living up to the agreement about web standards not having to opt in – I mean the agreement in spirit not in the letter of the loophole they’re obviously slinking through.
If I were a suspicious man (OK I am a suspicious man) I’d have to wonder if backing down made some bastard yell too many PANTS in his managerial office. I’d wonder if that person didn’t make phone calls talking PANTS about egg on Microsoft faces. I’d be suspicious about our new IE8 Compatability Mode Button.
PANTS Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.
By the way, it’s also interesting to note Bruce Lawson’s IE6 Mobile standards compliance tests that show that their IE6 Mobile is actually IE6 Desktop with some bits of IE7 grafted on. Oh Microsoft, you’ve done it again! And again, and again. It’s obvious that standards compliance lip service is the order of the day over there.
