Well, if you had been using a site for a long time with no problems, then updated your browser, and the site was now broken, who do you think gets the blame? If the site was always broken, then of course they would blame the developer.

Again, most non-technical people I know would blame the site. They will assume that the tools they use, even if updated, have been thoroughly tested before release. They will also assume that something happened to the site to break it rather than think that the updated tool may not work as advertised. In fact, most non-techies I know are only dimly cognizant that IE is a browser…most of them click on the blue E to get to the “internet”, and they can’t figure out why “internet” starts with an “E”. :-)

Is there anyone sane that can’t see the scale of difference here? Looking back at the hacks and workarounds that were attempted in the past it is a miracle that any of the old sites would still work in ’standards compliant’ browsers!

Agreed, there IS a scale of difference. In the 1997 world, if I was obstinate enough to want left margins in an IE4-rendered image, I’d apply a workaround to get it (probably involving a blank.gif). With the new meta tag, I’m offering up my fine-grained control to the browser to determine what to do. In other words, does anyone seriously think that there won’t be IE8-only hacks to fix things even when it’s rendering in standards-compliant mode after we supplied the meta tag? :-)

They should put a big red button on the main toolbar of IE8 with the message: “Having trouble viewing this site?”. In which case a “Yes” reply would revert the browser back to IE7, or 6, or 5, or whatever ancient version they choose to keep people locked in to.

This is the most intelligent solution I’ve heard…combined with a default browser behavior of standards-mode rendering, it’s exactly what’s needed to move forward.

In case anyone is young enough to believe that today’s work is anything like as difficult as it was when my knees didn’t creak I have taken the somewhat drastic step of digging out my 1997 edition of ‘Web Authoring Desk Reference’.

Opened (randomly) at page 511 (it is a huge book) then I can see the entry for ‘cascading style sheets, margin-left’. ‘margin-left’ at this evolutionary point was supported as follows:

Supported: NN4/Win, NN4/Mac, IE4/Win
Partial support: IE3/Win, IE3/Mac
Not supported: NN3/Win, NN3/Mac, IE4/Mac

Mosaic support is not detailed.

The sidenote tip is ‘Although Explorer 4 gives a right margin to an image just fine, it fails to give a left margin to an image’.

That is the level of knowledge of browser targeting that was required in 1997 to use something as trivial as margin-left.

Unless I have misunderstood, the meta tag targets users of IE8 to allow them to lock in sites to IE7 rendering. This allows sites that worked in IE7 in 2007 to work in IE8 in 2008, 2009 and 2010. But if sites want to use new features inserted into IE8 they need to insert:

Is there anyone sane that can’t see the scale of difference here? Looking back at the hacks and workarounds that were attempted in the past it is a miracle that any of the old sites would still work in ’standards compliant’ browsers!

It’s over six years since I last replied to one of Kevin’s pieces - I may not wait so long again.

Do we still have ‘flame wars’?

Hmmm. I can’t remember the last time a user blamed the BROWSER for the unusable site.

Well, if you had been using a site for a long time with no problems, then updated your browser, and the site was now broken, who do you think gets the blame? If the site was always broken, then of course they would blame the developer.

One thing that I haven’t seen mentioned was the fact that this proposed fix will only affect HTML 4.0 and XHTML 1.0. Once (if ever) it becomes viable to code in the new standards, then the META tag would redundant, as there would be no IE7 render mode for these new doctypes.

Especially when you think about once it’s no longer needed (if that day ever truly does come) you have to go back through all those pages and take it back out!

I disagree. The great thing about the meta-tag is that it will be ignored when it’s no longer needed. It could happily stay in the code for the indefinate future and would never affect any browser that isn’t looking for that tag. One day it will be a quaint reminder of how hard it was “back then” like it is when you look at Javascript that looks at the UA string.

Personally, I can’t wait for this to happen. I think it will be a great day when IE6 & IE7 are both discontinued and we can forget they existed. I’ve been waiting years for MS to get to this point in their browsers, and they often said it wouldn’t happen. While the meta-tag isn’t the most elegant solution, it is one that we can use to our advantage until the older browsers get weeded out of the user base.

Netscape slowly slipped under the waves as this new offensive hit the wires.

Anyone who experienced the browser wars up close and personal can see that this can only end badly. How does it benefit standards, the web and those who use it if IE is the last browser standing?

This misguided attempt at locking in market share actually highlights Microsoft’s lack of understanding of what people want from the web. Microsoft is simply executing a power play under cover of providing a better web experience.

Cynical, dastardly and downright underhanded.

Instead, they’ll blame the site and go elsewhere which then brings the problem back to the siteowner and the developers and not the browser.

Whether I like MS as a company or not is meaningless here. MS signed on to the specifications provided by the W3C and then renigged on the promised support. MS was actually one of the first proponents for standards.

Now Chris Wilson will say “We ship IE on over a billion computers…”, and I’ll remind Chris “That is because you’re not required to ship with anything else, or to tell your company there are better, more standards comliant browsers out there than yours. THere is no ‘Truth in Software Production” like there is in Lending or sentencing.”

But also it is exactly for this very same reason that this browser is onover a billion computers that their toes should be held to fire even more for it being the debacle it is. They have the most market share, they have the most money, the onus falls on MS (and Chris Wilson)to fix this, and the only way they can do it now is some hacky kludgy blackbag hackjob.

The web is a really big place. It’s not all XHTML strict compliance badges, blog rolls and Flickr photo streams. Like it or not MS with IE is in a position of responsibility…they can’t push semi-vengeful standards ideologies on the rest of the web to show them they’ve been living in sin.

I get the impression that a lot of the standards hard-lines have never had to make a compromise with a technical solution. I know I have.

but by this time users have had plenty of time to blame the new browser for the problems that have occurred in the interim, and they will continue to resist this and future browser upgrades.

Hmmm. I can’t remember the last time a user blamed the BROWSER for the unusable site.

After years of being told browser-sniffing is a no-no, and changing our coding to be standards-compliant with perhaps a few odd browser-specific CSS hacks (I’ve done them for both IE and FF), we’re now being told to start allowing server-sniffing? New browsers are supposed to sniff the meta tags to see if “me too!” is included to determine if they should render the page they way they should…um…really render the page?

We’ve got one argument stating that many sites aren’t maintained so they should continue to be rendered improperly by new browsers and an opposing argument saying we should put in temporary meta tags (to be ripped out later by the site maintainers) so the browser can render properly until everyone catches up.

I’ve taken great pains to make sure my sites are browser-agnostic, to the extent that I feel comfortable with who I leave out in the cold. I also develop in a corporate environment where IE6 still reigns (IE7 “breaks” too many high-$$$ third-party web applications). I’m confident my sites will work on IE8 no matter which mode it renders in, even before I start testing them. My preference in my own work is to not have anything that is aware of the browser or caters to a browser.

I like Microsoft. I’ve developed most of my work in an MS environment. I don’t think putting in extra tags is the answer, though. IE8 should render as closely to standards as possible, with perhaps the typical doctype sniffing to determine if the developer was paying attention (at least that’s still browser agnostic).

Maybe it’s time to bring back the horrible ‘Best viewed in…’ statements from the browser war era? But this time with a little addition:

Best viewed in a browser that is standards-compliant by default.

How about “best rendered in standards-compliant mode”? LOL

Years ago, they could’ve afforded to hire every single one of the brightest minds on the planet - minds that probably could’ve entirely re-written the buggy browser from scratch in a few months time, had it chosen to do so. Again, Hmm.

So they’ve had the money, the time and the opportunity to fix things. With some thought, doesn’t it become rather obvious that they are most likely CHOOSING non-compliance?

This would keep intranet and legacy app users locked in to their current IE stranglehold for the foreseeable future.

Microsoft is a company that has never chosen compliancy. And this has been a DELIBERATE choice all the way, right down the line.

And they NEVER WILL, or they would’ve done so by now.

By far the most disturbing aspect of this IE8 debate is that some developers and organizations who in the past have made standards compliance such high a priority have now thrown their reputations aside in order to back this hack.

People and groups that have announced their support of Microsoft on this issue can no longer truly consider themselves advocates of standards compliance. You can’t have it both ways. Standards are standards, whether it’s for Microsoft or Mozilla.

Anyway, here’s my suggestion: Since Microsft has chosen this course (with everyone else paying the bill), let’s put the onus on them to handle the breakage when it occurs.

They should put a big red button on the main toolbar of IE8 with the message: “Having trouble viewing this site?”.

In which case a “Yes” reply would revert the browser back to IE7, or 6, or 5, or whatever ancient version they choose to keep people locked in to.

(I’m cross-posting this to http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=527048)