Oh yea right. I’m sure they will miss the business.

I think the best approach is to make sure you DO NOT use IE when logging onto any MS website. That shows in their web stats. If every professional that logged on to Technet used FF or one of the others that would put the wind up them.

I gave up on the beta after B1 here is why…

1. It was claimed to pass Acid 2 but failed to do so (lies).
2. On my screens (1920X1200) everything was 20% too big. I could deal with that as a browser but every app that used a HTML interface for an install had buttons that were outside of the windowed area. And I was sick of tabbing to a button I couldn’t see to press enter and hope for the best.
3. I still have to do CC for other versions of IE so using 7 saved me jumping machines.

Good luck to MS and I hope they get it right but I won’t be using IE unless I’m checking or its use is defaulted to my their Visual Development tool installs. Why the hell would you?

I have a site that does comply fully to 4.01 transitional and has been verified on w3.org and it still breaks like crazy in Ie8 beta 2. If Microsoft does make people like me make any more hair, i just might loose it. It sucks doing the standard complainces and having something break. My site does work and looks great in IE7 and all other browsers.

If Microsoft does launch Ie8 with super standards mode as default i will never buy anything from Microsoft ever again.

If that were the case surely it would be obvious when you view the web using Fox or Safari or Opera.

I’m certainly not seeing that.

Yani

This is a great idea. I don’t mind sticking in that little piece of meta for IE8.

Then again, if it’s opt-out — thus forcing all these alleged lazy MS-focused devs to deploy the meta-tag — then we probably still have to audit our pages to see which of our beloved old IE7/6/5 hacks are now defunct and/or harmful.

We’ll have work to do either way (though, when you are talking about a major-version upgrade of IE, whoever doesn’t prepare themselves for that fact is a bit naïve to say the least!) — personally I’d feel better if the lazy MS-lovin’ devs finally had to do some as well.

Looking to the future, I simply can’t see MS’s solution as being sustainable. If they keep saddling each new browser with a compatibility engine for each one of its ancestors, it’ll collapse under its own weight before long.

If Chris Wilson & Co are listening: come on guys, grow a pair and have the courage to move forward. Vista made a few tough decisions wrt legacy-support, and while a few Joe Sixpacks out there are still moaning about that, it’s made your OS platform a whole lot better prepared for the future. Apply that same resolve to the browser and you’ll see more appreciation from the greater dev community than you’ve ever known or thought possible.

To quote Starsky: “Do it. Do it.”

I wonder what you would see as browser stats if you looked at MS web logs in professional discussions about web authoring?

Yani

With simplicity, connectivity and sustainability Microsoft has largely created this new real estate we call the World-Wide-Web. Whether standard or not, no current standards based browser renders text and images like Internet Explorer. And no other browser, standards or not, renders them as quickly.

The standards community can best Microsoft only if they can build better software that folks can be sure will be supported and maintained. It can be done, fellows, so don’t give up.