IE 8 Something; Web Indigestion Ensued
C'mon, I can't believe I am the first person to go with the "8"→"Ate" pun.
It seems IE8 will use an opt-in <meta …> tag to turn on standards mode. Crappy idea? Most certainly. Relevant? Turns out, not so much as you can continue to use doctype switching.
At least, as far as I can tell, that pretty much sums it up.
All of this does remind me of a quote:
There are three levels to creating software: computer science, software engineering, and this thing that people do with Java inside enterprises.
I think that that law can be generalized a little more:
… and this thing that people do within their intranets.
What follows is a fairly exhaustive list of links that you can read if you want all of the details. Admittedly, I am still working my way through this list. Hat tip to Mark Pilgrim's "pleasesirmayihaveanother" del.icio.us tag. Many of these links are pulled from there.
Starter reading:
- IEBlog : Compatibility and IE8
- A List Apart: Articles: Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility, and IE8
- A List Apart: Articles: From Switches to Targets: A Standardista's Journey
- Eric Meyer: Targeted
- Eric Meyer: Version Two
- Eric Meyer: Almost Target
- Hixie's Natural Log: Mistakes, Sadness, Regret
- Microsoft koan [dive into mark]
- Sam Ruby: Sunsetting Quirks Mode
And all the meaty commentary:
- Sam Ruby: Best Standards Support
- The Internet Explorer lock-in - Anne’s Weblog
- Sam Ruby: Managing Expectations
- IE8 To Make Tender Chickens
- isolani - Web Standards: End of line Internet Explorer
- Jeffrey Zeldman Presents : In defense of version targeting
- Andy Budd::Blogography: Has Internet Explorer Just Shot Itself in the Foot?
- Painfully Obvious: Standards & Complications
- Adactio: Journal—Broken
- Rendering Modes - Anne’s Weblog
- Do what you like to my CSS, but stay out of my HTML - Article - andrewingram
- Almost Precedent
- Internet Explorer lays anchor in 1999, sets sail for the future - glyphobet
- WallOfScribbles: Apparently IE8 is Causing a Ruckus
- The Fishbowl: How to break HTML by pretending to support it.
- wioota.com: I disagree
- Microsoft does it again: IE8 and web standards | The odd bit
- IE8 - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly | Shape Shed
- IE8 Version Targeting — Understanding and Discussing the Arguments — Konstruktors Notes
- Web Standards: The Ideal And The Reality
- geek ramblings � Internet Explorer 8: This is progress?
- Issues: Microsoft makes themselves look stupid to web developers again.
- 80beans: IE8 version targeting
- Will Microsoft’s Feud With Web Designers Continue With IE8?
- Version Targeting: Defaulting to the Past to Spite the Future?
- rc3.org — The implications of IE8
- Continuing Intermittent Incoherency : Big Questions On IE8’s Big Progress
- Goodbye DOCTYPE switching, hello META targeting | Matt Wilcox .net
- Inferis’ Code Dump: IE8 and Standards compliance
- Tagneto: X-Web-Epoch instead of X-UA-Compatible
- Meta Stupidity | Robert Accettura’s Fun With Wordage
- doron's blaahg: What's Up, Doctype?
- Version Targeting For IE8, Developer Wars, My Thoughts :: Unintentionally Blank
- Painful Web Standard Decision from IE : In Pursuit of Mysteries
- John Resig - HTML5 DOCTYPE
- David Baron's weblog: What should Microsoft do instead?
- Man with no blog: Round One - We Blinked and the Corporate Sector Won
- Ogwaros Iwenal: Breaking the web with a "don’t break the web" philosophy
- Version Targeting and JavaScript Libraries — All in the head
- Code Happy | Unstoppable Robot Ninja
- Standards mode is the new quirks mode | 456 Berea Street
And, oh yeah, HTML5 was published as a W3C Working Draft. Seems somehow fitting to link to that here at the end.
I've ranted a bit about this over on Pownce. I get Zeldman's point that most people aren't applying standards and we'll never convert the world, but I still don't see how adding another piece of duct tape solves the problem. If they don't apply standards they won't apply this either. Then once they start testing in IE 8 they may not understand why it's rendering as IE 7.
I agree that we should be encouraging IE to be standards compliant, and their efforts towards that in IE 8 are worth a pat on the back, but when you tack this onto the equation you're still faced with having to do something special for IE.