Zeldman cautiously supported the IE8 team’s previous strategy of default version-targeting whereas Jeremy Keith argued passionately against it. In the end, supporters of Keith’s argument prevailed in getting the IE8 developers to change their minds and render everything in standards-mode by default.
Microsoft recently published a set of Interoperability Principles. Thinking about IE8’s behavior with these principles in mind, interpreting web content in the most standards compliant way possible is a better thing to do.
We think that acting in accordance with principles is important, and IE8’s default is a demonstration of the interoperability principles in action. While we do not believe any current legal requirements would dictate which rendering mode a browser must use, this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue. As stated above, we think it’s the better choice.
After a long and confusing discussion, Microsoft listened to the community and then made the appropriate changes. I’m speechless.
Follow me on Twitter
10:02 am
Even Microsoft can do something right =P
I’m sure MS is somewhat willing to work with the community now after losing much ground to Mozilla (and Apple) in web browsers and Google in just about everything…
I’m more surprised that IE8 is near release.
10:10 am
I’m surprised Microsoft has generated so much noise about a browser that offer so little to the community beyond supporting standards.
Maybe this will put and end to the sites created by lazy programmers that state “must be viewed with Internet Explorer”.