Chris Wilson of the IE Team gives us some insight into how web standards were handled through the various incarnations of IE. I found it interesting how they expected web developers not to change their current content when the switch was made from IE6 to IE7.
But wait, a lot of people say at this point, why isn’t this a problem for Firefox, or Safari, or any other browser? The answer is that 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. 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.
I, personally, never experienced any issues with IE7 rendering any sites that I visited. Were these websites not changing what was served depending on what browser visited them? According to the above, I’d say yes. Did web developers overthink themselves when the switch was made to IE7? I don’t know that one for positive, but if the above quote manages to hold up true, well..
I think my biggest annoyance during the whole IE7 outrage from web developers, was those that decided they weren’t going to serve any of their content to IE users and told me I had to use Firefox. Well, in those cases, I just found the information elsewhere. I don’t see the logic in cutting off roughly 70% of the browser users just because you were too lazy to code your site correctly.
On tap for IE8, is 3 different "modes".
Aaron Gustafson, one of the members of the WaSP-Microsoft Task Force wrote an article detailing where we ended up that was posted on A List Apart today; I highly recommend reading it for a different perspective. I’ll summarize, though, that:
- “Quirks mode” remains the same, and compatible with current content.
- “Standards mode” remains the same as IE7, and compatible with current content.
- If you (the page developer) really want the best standards support IE8 can give, you can get it by inserting a simple <meta> element. Aaron gives more details on this in his article.
So, if you want to use the newer IE8 standards support, all it will take is a <meta> tag adjustment to your content page, which will allow you to pick and choose which pages use it.
I’m sure we’ll hear more as IE8 marches closer to release, so make sure to head over and read up if browser stuff is your cup o’ tea.
Tags: Microsoft Internet Explorer IE6 IE7 IE8 WaSP-Microsoft Task Force
