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The Internet Explorer 8 doctype smackdown
Posted by Sigurd on 11 February 2008
Over recent weeks, and at Kiwifoo (pictured), there's been some considerable debate about Microsoft's proposed features of the Internet Explorer 8 release.
Microsoft has failed to upgrade a large percentage of their browser users from v6 to v7 because many intranets and web-applications were not designed for standards, and so break when you upgrade. Microsoft's suggestion is for webpages to indicate they are 'compatible' with newer versions of IE, so that existing pages don't break. This doesn't allow sites broken in IE6 to work, and is fraught with other problems, athough it is similar to how the problem of breaking the web has been dealt with in the past.
FireFox, Safari, and Opera work closely with each other, and use a public, open process for their browser development and genuinely strive for consensus with the developer community about their direction. Microsoft would be wise to follow suit if they genuinely wanted to reclaim marketshare and goodwill with the web developer community.
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Comments
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I think realistically Microsoft are FAR more interested in the wants and needs of large corporations who use IE as a base for thir web apps thatn a handful of seemingly unimportant designers who genuinely care about the future of the web. The decision seems non-sensical to me in too many ways to be viable, but time will tell what microsoft finally decides.
Posted by Design City, 13/02/2008 2:39pm (3 months ago)
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In fact, running multiple versions of IE is not such a problem, for example:
http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE
First I thought the Versioning of IE8 was bad, but I'm starting to think it's the best way.
Moreover, a page written in HTML5 will always be run in IE8 mode, even without the switch. The only problem with this is that HTML5 is still a long way off. :-)
Posted by Dieter Orens, 11/02/2008 11:50pm (3 months ago)
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If the old intranets/sites not built for standards thing is that much of a problem, why doesn't Microsoft just make it easy for people to run older versions of IE6 alongside newer ones?
Posted by mark, 11/02/2008 11:42pm (3 months ago)