RSSInternet Explorer 8 to feature 'super' Web standards mode
By Scott M. Fulton, III | Published January 22, 2008, 6:41 PM
If the next edition of the world's most distributed browser expects all Web sites to pass the Acid2 test, one of its key architects said yesterday, an unfortunate irony might be that many sites could break in that browser.
In one of the stranger admissions yet to come from a Microsoft developer, Internet Explorer 8 platform architect Chris Wilson acknowledged on his team's blog yesterday that one of the quandaries his team has faced to date is meeting the simultaneous challenges of embracing Web standards to a greater extent than ever before...while not breaking Web sites that tweaked themselves years ago to comply with IE6.
IE7 is currently equipped with a feature that is internally known as "quirks mode," which enables it to display sites that were tweaked for IE6's wayward notion of Web compatibility. It then also has a "standards mode" which addresses Microsoft's new efforts to do a U-turn and adopt standards promoted by the W3C and the Web Standards Project.
But even IE8 will go one step further, Wilson admitted. Therefore IE8 will be equipped for the first time with a third mode of support, which enables developers to address the browser, telling it that it's been engineered to support Web standards.
There's no name for this mode just yet, but some may consider it a kind of "super standards mode," invoked by way of a META tag embedded in the site's HEAD elements.
"Developers of many sites had worked around many of the shortcomings or outright errors in IE6, and now expected IE7 to work just like IE6," Wilson wrote. "Web developers expected us, for example, to maintain our model for how content overflows its box, even in 'standards mode,' even though it didn't follow the specification - because they'd already made their content work with our model. In many cases, these sites would have worked better if they had served IE7 the same content and stylesheets they were serving when visited with a non-IE browser, but they had 'fixed their content' for IE. Sites didn't work, and users experienced problems."
The current mood at Microsoft, he went on, is that the optimum state of affairs would be to write IE8 completely around Web standards, and then expect sites to do their share and follow those standards.
But in reality, sites have already been engineered not to break in IE -- the old version -- so it's now up to Microsoft to make certain those sites don't break while at the same time they move to a world they hope was more driven by something called "standards."
'Standards Mode' should NOT need a tag, use a tag to identify all the horsed-up versions.
IDentifying a site ( as IE6, IE6sp2, IE7, Frontpage, ExpressionA,B,C,..) will put the penalty on Microsoft rather than on the writers that tried to hold to the standard.
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|So the browser should first assume a site is old, stale, unmaintained, and has an incorrect DOCTYPE.
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|Microsoft has had its fair share of stupid ideas over the years, but this is definitely one of the dumber ideas with regard to IE.
There is, of course, a simpler solution---
QUIRKS MODE-- IE7 and earlier rendering.
STANDARDS MODE-- IE8 (and later) rendering in STANDARDS COMPLIANT MODE.
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|That will likely be the default. It should only render "quirks" when it encounters a site that uses them.
Likely so as not to piss off the developers that have been die hard IE coders (by their apparent unwillingness to stop using the "quirks").
Not pissing off the core...more folks should try that.
Most of the whiners here don't use IE anyway. Microsoft is taking care of those who are loyal first, and catering to the whiners second. This is a bad thing?
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|Not that easy--then you have sites that depend on the current "quirks mode" (e.g., say the incorreclty implemented box model of IE 4/5, part of what quirks mode in IE 6/7 assumes) that would break in IE 8 if they decide to use IE 7's rendering as the new quirks mode.
Part of the reason for the introduction of this new meta tag is that it will not break in the way that doctype sniffing is breaking right now.
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|And how do you know which sites still use "quirky" IE 4/5 behavior? That's what doctype sniffing is used for now. The problem is, IE 7's standards mode changed from IE 6's standards mode (because IE 7 implements closer to the standards), thus breaking a lot of pages that relied on IE 6's "standards mode" behavoir, which they assumed was either correct or wouldn't change. IE 8 will likely implement even closer to the standards than IE 7 and potentially break any page that relies on any bugs in IE 7's rendering.
The addition of the meta tag is a workaround that, in addition to the doctype (without which the page would be rendered in quirks mode, anway), that can help determine the best way to render the page, enabling developers who know what they're doing to move forward and enabling the IE team to actually move closer to the standards without worrying about wrecking existing pages.
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|They shouldn't use quirks unless they are CSS quirks, and if they are, put them in their own IE stylesheet with a conditional comment for that version of IE.
It's not bloody hard.
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|Has anyone on here been able to beta test any of the early development versions of the IE8 alphas/betas? Are there any sites out there that have posted screen shots of it? I would be curious to see what the GUI on it looks like. Any ideas on when there will be public betas of this product?
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|In other words, MS is saying "We acted like jerks and we sucked big time! But now we want to change for the better."
At least they admitted it. Other companies may be too arrogant to admit mistakes.
However, it would be even better if they would compensate people for time and efforts spent on making websites IE-compliant and now these people have to undo those changes. Lower the prices of their products, maybe?
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|What mistake? They new exactly what they were doing. While MS held monopoly on browser market it made perfect business sense (MS style) to deliberately ignore the standards and tie web sites to IE. Only when Firefox became real threat (using standards compliance and one of the arguments) then it became necessary to implement those standards.
Business as usual.
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|Finally, I think ALL browsers should start implementing a "do the site right" or **** of way of thinking. I know of several unexperienced backyard companies labeling themselves as "web designer/developers" charging top dollar, using nauseating "photoshop bevel effects", not knowing what "DOCTYPE" means, can't code in CSS and still think animated giffs are cool. As a web dev myself I see this and say this has to be stopped. This is a step in the right direction for showing these pseudo designers web dev needs to be a certified art, not something anyone can charge for.
### W3C ALL THE WAY!! ###
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|I have tried ie 8 and firefox 4 and both are 96% faster than netscape 4.26 at downloading midi files of camp town races.
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|My test of Opera 11 shows that it is 97% faster!
...
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|My test of Crisco grease 2.7 shows it 110% faster heheh
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|eunichman said:
"My test of Crisco grease 2.7 shows it 110% faster heheh"
--------------------------------------------
It is, however, lacking in Omega 3 fatty acids and contains things detrimental to your good health.
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|Unless you've evolved to properly utilize the ingredients that are detrimental to you backwards homo-sapien types. :p
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|It's good to see "betanews.com" actually providing some news related to what its name is. Should be called "technews.com or something to that affect.
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|Uh...maybe stop coming here and reading if you really don't like it then?
What do you want them to post...just news about products that are in the middle of a beta test?
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|Yeah, betanews.com sure would make sense then wouldn't it?
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|Agreed. I was caught offguard when BetaNews started their CES coverage with a site format change. I was ready to say goodbye and remove the bookmark to BetaNews when the CES coverage ended and BetaNews returned to "normal".
There are a bajillion sites all covering the same thing. However, BetaNews IMO has the best coverage of non-released and spankin' new products. The other sites have the look and feel and editorial of 13 year olds. I don't need NSFW Warez and Porn ads served up when I'm reading about IE8. Yes, sometimes I do think "M$ sux", but I go to slashdot to get that rammed down my throat. I appreciate BetaNews' balanced, professional reporting.
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|Two words.
Beta
News.
Look at the site Capital B, Capital N.
They cover Betas (FileForum)and *gasp* News.
Amazzazing, eh?
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|Hehe.
*Pats on the head*
Careful, you'll blow something.
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|???
Didn't use caps. No exclamation marks...
Have you perhaps had a bit too much coffee today?
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|Well you blew my sarcasm meter up...
... yes... maybe I have had a little too much coffee.
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|First off, quirks mode emulates the behavior of IE 5.x, not IE 6. IE 6 introduced the DOCTYPE switch, which triggered the browser to switch to standards mode. The problem is that standards mode really wasn't standards compliant. When IE7 came out with better standards compliance, it broke a lot of sites that were written to IE 6's level of compliance.
To prevent this from happening again with IE8, this new META tag was proposed by a Microsoft-WASP working group. What it proposes to do is activate a certain rendering engine given a parameter to the new META tag. For instance, if the tag specified IE8, then IE would use the IE8 rendering engine to render the page. If it specified IE6, then IE6 would be used to render the page. This means that when a new version of IE is released (that supports stronger adherence to the standards), current sites do not break because they are still rendered using the old engine version. If a web developer wants to take advantage of the new features present in the new version of the rendering engine, they simply change the contents of the META tag to reflect the new version of IE.
This new META tag should help prevent the "breakage" of the web that IE7 caused a couple of years ago. By forcing people to opt-in to standards compliance mode, browser update-related breakage should be minimalized to almost zilch.
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|great, so 100% standards compliant sites, don't get rendered in standard-compliant mode, because they don't include MS's NON-STANDARD META tag.
ooh, and lets all look forward to new tags for ie9, ie9std, ie8 quirks, ie7/6 quirks, and beyond.
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|Microsoft needs to just go ahead and put out a browser that uses standards, even if it does break websites. This will allow the industry to finally come together and there is no more lets design it the right way, oh now lets design it the Microsoft way.
They did this with Vista, every hardware and software vendor out there had to redesign and learn new ways of doing things with vista. Now why are they so worried with the web? At least they will be doing the RIGHT thing and not their OWN thing. Helping and not hurting.
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|Bad analogy :). There's a lot of legacy web sites out there that need to render on any somewhat modern browser. There's not much legacy hardware that will run on Vista. Microsoft is really trying not to break the web with this release, and yet add all the standards compliance that people have been begging for for years. This isn't easy. With this approach, there's nothing preventing people from coming together and "designing the right way". They just need to include this meta tag that every other browser will ignore. The only negative side effect would be your web files being like 50 bytes larger, there's probably more white-space on a given site than this meta tag will take up.
I think they'll probably introduce this feature then a few versions (years) from now scrap it once the majority of web sites have been updated, in which case the meta tag will just be ignored by all browsers. I think this is a really good temporary approach as long as they are thinking of the future.
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|They could add free beer too, IE will always stink.
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|Yes, but if you drink enough of the beer, the stench won't bother you anymore.
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|I think the IE stench goes beyond that...
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|troll troll troll, stick with your memory raping firefox plz
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|Newb, Stick with IE while the rest of the planet uses better browsers. Lmao.
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|Actually, the rest of the planet uses IE, FF is growing but nowhere near MS yet.
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|"while not breaking Web sites that tweaked themselves years ago to comply with IE6."
These, if you'll pardon my high horse, sites should have used the conditional comments for IE. Hacks are a bad idea and that's why conditional comments exist for IE.
If they had it would require only a simple update of adding a lt IE 8 to the comment.
/is possibly an unreasonable grumpy bas****
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