It’s screwing up the web more. I’d rather a temporary screw up now, than the big mess M$ continues to make.

think IE8 should render the pages like IE8 renders the pages. I don’t think there should be this alternate option. I don’t see FF offering a hey view your website in v2 rendering engine. I mean, the point of the upgrade to IE8 is just that, make your browser better, adopt all of the current standards.

I agree with the principle that IE8 needs a compatibility mode. There are websites out there that won’t work properly in IE8 Standards mode and it is not in Microsoft’s or their users’ interests to ignore those sites. If the list has some sort of vetting and whitelist procedure, it could well be the best way to get most people seeing all websites in the best light.

No, Firefox doesn’t need compatibility mode because there is very little difference in rendering between v2 and v3 – there will be very few, if any, sites that will work fine on Fx2 but will not work as intended on Fx3.

mmj: THANK YOU for that link! I read it ages ago and always tried to find the link again, but never could.

No worries. It’s an interesting site.

(when IE9 comes, we’ll all be targets for it again)

If IE8 is fully standards compliant, there won’t be any need for an IE9 tag, only ‘= IE8′ categories – the site will either work in a standards compliant browser, or it will be built for previous versions of IE (well, and ones that break completely).

Also, trying to get every browser to use the same rendering engine would kill innovation on the web. Competition drives invention & innovation, and more support for different standards as the makers of the engines compete. Everyone using the same rendering engine would mean noone would add new features or support for different things, because there would be nothing compelling them to do so.

mmj: THANK YOU for that link! I read it ages ago and always tried to find the link again, but never could.

I largely agree with Joel Spolsky’s view on the subject, which he explains at length here.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17.html

- All IE8 – compatibility problems for end-users. Even with compatibility view, many people won’t be wise enough to try the compatibility view button. For example, my mom. Gather many people like her, along with many sites that are not IE8 ready, and you get lack of adoption, which won’t benefit anyone (least of all web developers).

- All IE7 – we all know what’s wrong with that. Sites that were supposed to be written correctly will be punished by not getting the new features, and we’ll only keep reinforcing IE7, up until MS later decides to bite the bullet.

- Another engine – won’t happen, as if something goes wrong (security wise), the MSIE team won’t be able to fix it as soon as they can now. After all, they’ll have to either synchronize with the engine developers or will have to make direct contribution themselves. The first is not feasible for MS (and for end users too really), and the second… ask yourself if you really want that. I mean with what IE is, do you really want Gecko or WebKit to have that Microsoft-ish smell to it? Besides, this still won’t help compatibility. Many sites simply give IE one thing and another thing to everyone else. Even if another rendering engine is used, the detection mechanisms will have to remain (UA string and all), meaning a lot of sites will still break miserably by giving IE what is supposed to be for another browser.
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What is missing here (and I’ve said this on the IEBlog too) is an easy way for sites to get themselves removed from the list without using X-UA-Compatible. If you get IN, the MSIE team will contact you via your domain’s WHOIS email, telling you your site appears not to be IE8 ready, and that you can quickly force yourself in/out with X-UA-Compatible. When you need to get OUT though, you need to write them back an email, explicitly requesting that you’re removed and wait to see if they’ll indeed do that. Once they do it, you get removed on the next scheduled list update.

Too laborious and time consuming, don’t you think? What if… you could automatically be scheduled for removal by sending an email? A program could easily be made that will process these special emails (forwarding the rest to the MSIE team for manual consideration) and automatically remove you from the upcoming list. The removal will also grant you “list immunity”, at least for the IE8 version (when IE9 comes, we’ll all be targets for it again). For security reasons (you don’t want people falsly removing big sites just to make end users unhappy), the email address from which you send this message will have to be the email in the domain’s WHOIS record. Any thoughts? Better ideas?

Even if I know my site works best in IE8, it still may be forced into IE7 mode. That won’t help anyone.

Then you use the tag to tell IE8 to render in standards mode, which is the whole purpose of the tag!

The other thing is by doing this they get people off of IE6 and onto IE7 or IE8. Thats what the web means. We need to get IE6 gone and buried. I have a helluva time trying to get my websites to work in IE6 and most of the time i have very little trouble getting my sites to work in IE7 and all other browsers.

just my two cents.//.

I think wow that would be fantastic. What if microsoft did what Google did. what if microsoft adopted the FF rendering engine but then added a bunch of extras to its browser to set it apart from FF and other flavors.

These days I’m liking Google chrome alot. I think its the fastest browser on the market.