IE8 - A Gift for Geeks

I just read that Microsoft announced they have decided to use the new standards compliant rendering engine as the default mode in IE8. There has been a lot of squabble ever since Microsoft announced they were going to ship IE8 with the IE7 rendering mode as default and allow site owners to add a bit of meta code to target existing Internet Explorer rendering engines. Basically, you would of had to add the meta code to your site to tell IE8 to take advantage of the CSS 2.1 support. The initial idea of using the IE7 rendering engine doesn’t make sense for the continued development of the web. It would leave millions of sites frozen in time. The only good thing I can think of would be IE8 not breaking existing pages on the web that were built for earlier versions of IE.

Why this is good for you, me, and Microsoft

Although shipping IE8 with the standards compliant mode as default will break many sites, it’s a great for the long term. Once Microsoft drops support for IE7 and IE8 becomes the recommended browser, it will force site owners to take some action with their sites. This will leave site owners with the choice to either add the meta code to freeze their site to a particular IE browser (Bad Idea!), or update their sites to conform to current web standards (Great Idea!).

Ultimately, I think IE8 could potentially light a fire under the web’s ass and spark a global web revision. This will create high demand for web services specializing in web standards. This is great for the health of the web and Microsoft’s image within the web community. It’s also great for design agencies, since sites will need to be updated to meet current web standards. Could this be Microsoft’s way of cleaning up the web?

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