(this is reprinted from my workplace blog here where it was originally posted.)

Either Microsoft came to its senses, or I’m going crazy. I haven’t decided which yet, as it’s still early in the day and the caffeine hasn’t kicked in. In a surprise annoucement Microsoft declared that contrary to their prior decision on the matter they’d be making Internet Explorer 8 support advanced standards by default. Their now infamous meta tag will still exist, allowing a site’s developer to choose instead to target their site for an older version (such as IE7), but those who fail to do that will have their sites render in as up-to-date a fashion in IE as they would in any other browser.

Reactions vary, with critics either skeptically stating that Big Blue is doing this due to recent EU legal conundrums or are caving in to mass complaints of the developer community. On his part, Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer, says “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.”

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(this is reprinted from my workplace blog here where it was originally posted.)

Like the kid that just won’t start poking the wasp’s nest, A List Apart has decided to push the angry topic button of the web development community by posting not one, but TWO new articles this week about the already infamous decision by Microsoft to incorporate a version targeting meta tag in Internet Explorer 8.

I’ve already poked my toe into the swimming pool of controversy in my post Loud Noises!, where I tentatively agree with the whole idea. After all, Netscape did essentially the same thing when they introduced the DOCTYPE tag as a way to control standards mode, and nobody got together a group of vassal warriors, went to their hall and burned it while standing at the door with swords. But Microsoft, being the two ton gorilla it is with a standards compliance history that is spotty to say the least, apparently hasn’t earned the right to try to follow suit and keep the Internet from breaking on their newest browser when it is released.

In his article They Shoot Browsers, Don’t They?, Jeremy Keith essentially says “Hey, we shouldn’t add a single meta tag just because one browser needs it.” Well, I hate to break Mr. Keith’s bubble of fantasy, but the fact is that for now, the vast majority of people on the Internet are using Internet Explorer. Heck, IE6, which is eons old and about as standards compliant as a clown on a unicycle (no, I don’t know what that metaphor means either), has a larger market share than FireFox and Safari combined. Add in IE7, and their share is so large it hurts.

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