Well Internet Explorer 8 is out of Beta and has finally been released. It didn’t meet the IE8 in 2008 proclamation that some where betting on. But no matter at least it is here, better late than never, eh.
Yes it’s faster meaner, clean and generally a better browser than IE7. There is lots of fancy stuff I can’t use from a design view as other browsers don’t support it, but innovation is still good. As a User Experience designer, it’s a nicer browser to work with. It lines up and supports most of the standards, mind you I do suspect it was written to pass Acid 2 specifically and not o be complaint with all of the upcoming W3C guidelines.
You know a few months back Microsoft floored the web industry by doing a back flip on its previous decision to include a X-UA-Compatible Meta switch with Internet Explorer 8.
What a difference 6 months makes. Now Microsoft are back to their old tricks. So what have they done, well it seems now that Internet Explorer 8 will not be defaulting to rendering in complete standards compliant mode that Microsoft promised.
Microsoft told us via a very careful explanation from the standards representatives working with them (Eric Meyer et al) that Internet Explorer 8 would have a switch (meta tag) that would have to be in place to render the new features (including JavaScript improvements), otherwise the rendering engine would be fixed at Internet Explorer 7 levels. In other words to render IE8 as IE8 you have to have the metatag switch.
This was primarily in response to the IE6 to IE7 compatibility backlash by the corporate sector; as IE7 broke a lot of Intranet applications. We all bitched and grumbled, Jeremy Keith got up on his soapbox. But basically we all go on with it, understanding (but not liking) Microsoft’s positioning. That was in the past.
It’s been a few days now since the release by Chris Wilson on the official Internet Explorer Blog and the subsequent follow up by Eric Meyer and Aaron Gustafson (as requested) showing support for and explaining in detail the introduction of the X-UA-Compatible Meta switch. Now the post to read here is the Microsoft one. That is primary to the whole deal, it explains somewhat why this was done.
