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Microsoft rethinks IE8′s default behavior

By Aaron Gustafson | March 3rd, 2008 | Filed in Browsers, Microsoft, Microsoft TF

Perhaps it was our complaining or perhaps it was a reconsideration of its own interoperability principles, but Microsoft has decided to change its course on IE8 and will opt-in to its new standards mode by default.

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This afternoon, in an announcement posted on the IE Blog, Microsoft officially reversed its position on IE8′s default behavior with regard to its new standards mode. The browser will now automatically opt-in all websites to “super standards mode” unless explicitly told not to (using IE’s version targeting mechanism).

So what does this mean? Well, a few things:

  1. Standards-based developers will not have to add an additional header to their server or another meta element to their markup to realize the benefits of IE8′s new rendering and scripting engines.
  2. Any non-standards aware developers will need to be educated to either a) implement version targeting, or b) get their site compliant.
  3. Anyone using JavaScript that engages in browser sniffing will need to replace that for feature detection (and check their third-party code too) as many assumptions about IE’s scripting engine could be proven false in this release.

This was a very complex issue and I fully understood and had come to accept Microsoft’s earlier decision to break with convention and not automatically opt sites in to the new engine, but I have to say I’m glad they’ve reversed that decision. In the end, this does put more pressure on them to get the word out about how version targeting can prevent a recurrence of the issues that came about when IE7 released, but, personally, I feel their product (and the web at large) is better for it.

What do you think?

Your Replies

#1 On March 3rd, 2008 6:06 pm WaSP Member ccasciano replied:

This is great to hear, and in no small part to the response from the community to the initially announced default behavior.

I think the direction now is much more sound — only “freeze” a page if you don’t expect to be returning to it and know you haven’t written to the standards. There are certainly some implementation questions still lurking about when you are in the IE7 [or later IE8] compat mode, and LOTS of education and standards evangelism to do to prevent authors from turning first to IE7, IE8 or another compat mode vs. the best standards mode, but this is a great next step.

#2 On March 3rd, 2008 6:12 pm WaSP Member hmkoltz replied:

Great news from Microsoft!

This decision by Microsoft is so important to web standards and because they made this decision, convincing the Educational community that Web standards are a very important part of every technically related program, will be a bit easier.

#3 On March 3rd, 2008 6:32 pm WaSP Member faruk replied:

This is a fantastic move from the perspective of Web Standards and the Web itself.

Once IE8 is ready for the public, we should be seeing a highly competitive market from a standards-support perspective which will bring progress to the Web much faster than before.

A great day for web standards indeed!

#4 On March 3rd, 2008 6:34 pm Jonathan Kahn replied:

Aaron,

This is great news!

I think it demonstrates the influence of both community debate about browser interoperability, and Neelie Kroes… despite all the negative reaction to Opera’s antitrust complaint, I believe it helped to encourage this outcome.

#5 On March 3rd, 2008 6:35 pm Chris Poteet replied:

This is fantastic news! They have done such a good job listening and adapting to the design community they serve.

#6 On March 3rd, 2008 6:37 pm ernest leitch replied:

IE8 sounds like it’s making great progress and will fix new and old bugs that have been plaguing developers. Has there been any mention if MS will release it for XP or will this be another reason to push people into Vista?

#7 On March 3rd, 2008 6:44 pm Damien Buckley replied:

This is not only good news in terms of implementation for standards aware designers but also great news that MS are listening – and acting. This bodes very well for the future IMHO.

#8 On March 3rd, 2008 6:55 pm Shelley replied:

I hope I’ll be pardoned for not popping the cork until we see what IE8 will support, including XHTML. After all, what MS has done is no different than what Firefox, Safari, and Opera do as a matter of course.

This is a good…but I’ll be glad when I see what the browser will deliver.

#9 On March 3rd, 2008 7:03 pm Stuart King replied:

Interesting! I figure it is going to take significantly longer for the majority of IE7/IE6 users to upgrade to IE8 (because some of their favourite sites will not work properly for a while). This might actually slow down the adoption of standards on the web.

#10 On March 3rd, 2008 7:17 pm Nathan replied:

Wow, I can’t believe MS have actually listened.

This is a major step in the right direction for IE and web standards and I believe MS will enjoy a new level of respect from the standards community at large.

I do agree with Shelley though, while this is a great day for standards I’m still interested to see what the browser will support.

Fantastic news either way, thank you IE team.

#11 On March 3rd, 2008 7:48 pm DavidONE replied:

Excellent news, and very encouraging that MS listened to the vast majority of the web dev community who were so unhappy with the initial proposal.

#12 On March 3rd, 2008 8:09 pm Kelson replied:

Great news! Depending on what capabilities are added, my standards-based websites using progressive enhancement could actually look better on IE8 than on IE7, instead of looking exactly the same.

#13 On March 3rd, 2008 10:14 pm hoopskier replied:

I doubt it had anything to do with the outcry from the “web dev community.” I’d bet it has everything to do with a certain governmental regulatory agency which has so far fined Microsoft 3 billion dollars and proven to be a sympathetic ear for any competitor which can’t seem to compete on its own merits.

#14 On March 3rd, 2008 10:23 pm goodwitch replied:

Wow! Thanks to everyone who has worked so hard to make IE8 web standards compliant.

That’s one small meta for quirks, one giant leap for web standards!

#15 On March 4th, 2008 12:13 am Ali Sattari replied:

And the nightmare for non-standard designers begins here :)

#16 On March 4th, 2008 12:32 am WaSP Member faruk replied:

Shelley,

Comparing to Safari, Firefox and Opera isn’t really fair though: none of those browsers have had to deal with the majority of the web being built towards a prior version’s bugs. To some extent maybe, but nothing on the scale of Internet Explorer.

This is a very significant move for the IE team. Obviously we’ll have to see just how well IE8 behaves with standards when it comes out, but this new intent is very commendable.

#17 On March 4th, 2008 2:29 am Martijn ten Napel replied:

This is good news. Also good news is that there is still a simple mechanisme to fix problems for non-compliant sites. I guess we as a community have to try to do our best and reach out to all those clueless good willing personal site owners and to stimulate once again the web shops that turn out sloppy code to change their behaviour.

To customers we can say that it pays to be compliant: you have the benefits of progression, but not the financial obligation to keep fixing.

#18 On March 4th, 2008 3:39 am Steve Workman replied:

It’s great that MS is listening to the community, though Stuart is right, it may slow down adoption.

That said, MS now has to concentrate on making it an outstanding browser to use day-to-day, making it punch its weight in the feature department as well as keeping it fast.

#19 On March 4th, 2008 3:49 am Robert Whittaker replied:

This is great news. It will mean additional short-term pain for previously-MS-orientated developers, but in the long run the benefit to the advancement of Web Standards will be immense.

Thanks Microsoft, and here’s hoping that you’ll stick to “standards-compliant by default” in future releases too.

#20 On March 4th, 2008 5:09 am Rick replied:

Brilliant PR exercise! Lots of extra free publicity, making it look like the umpteenth standards and interoperability promise actually means something, whilst at the same time nearly tearing the web standards community apart, making them look like a bunch of bickering children.

Yes, the above would make me sound like a totally paranoid asshole if a) the original revelation of the version targeting strategy wasn’t such a carefully coordinated PR offensive in the first place (with A List Apart as the #1 shill) , and b) Microsoft hadn’t pulled this kind of stunt a dozen times before.

I’ll believe it when IE8 actually goes public and does everything it promises to do, and has no other “embrace, extend and extinguish” tricks up it’s sleeve. Until then, still waiting for the other shoe to drop. The idea of Microsoft caving to ‘public’ pressure (public as in, a handful of people who care) and choosing standards over short term self-interest is just to good to be true.

If true however, statements like “great news” and “a step in the right direction” are almost ridiculous understatements. It would be a total revolution, a completely unprecedented radical change of Microsofts strategy an business practices. Somebody should check the temperature in hell and tie down the pigs, just in case.

#21 On March 4th, 2008 6:50 am Breton Slivka replied:

“Any non-standards aware developers will need to be educated to either a) implement version targeting, or b) get their site compliant.”

Wait a second. My understanding is that any non standards aware developer will just get their website rendered in quirks mode. (That is, IE5 rendering mode). Just like they’ve always done. This is the case for any page without a doctype. For the vast majority of non standards aware web developers- This reversal will make no difference. It won’t make any difference for the activeX laden intranets running microsoft sharepoint with some default template. It won’t make a difference to that teacher’s site designed in front page. Their sites will all still render like they did in 1997.

The only pages this will effect are the ones by developers that cared just enough to add a doctype to the top of their html. Perhaps out of cargo cult coding- Perhaps to fix some box model bug. In any case, it seems the impact of these microsoft decisions has been vastly exaggerated, and mostly effect people who are at least vaguely aware of standards, or use tools by developers that are aware of standards enough to fix their pages.

Perhaps I’m wrong, but I can’t help but feel a bit baffled.

#22 On March 4th, 2008 8:01 am Shelley replied:

“Comparing to Safari, Firefox and Opera isn’t really fair though: none of those browsers have had to deal with the majority of the web being built towards a prior version’s bugs. To some extent maybe, but nothing on the scale of Internet Explorer.”

Perhaps if Microsoft didn’t use its dominant position in the OS market to do all it can to ensure IE is the dominant browser, it wouldn’t be in the position of having to worry about all those legacy web pages.

People are saying this is a strike for standards. I hope I’ll be forgiven for saying I’d rather wait and see what exactly IE8 delivers before making a comment on the company’s support for standards.

#23 On March 4th, 2008 8:46 am Nicole replied:

I’m extremely glad that MS has reversed their position on this issue – it’s a big step toward seeing the community successfully affect change.

#24 On March 4th, 2008 8:58 am Isofarro replied:

This about-face from Microsoft is a surprise, and doesn’t make sense – we don’t have all the relevant information to hand. I do recall both Aaron Gustafson and Eric Meyer explaining that this meta tag opt in was necessary, and there was no good alternative.

A month later, we’re told that the major change to IE8 would be the backwards breakage in DOM – which surprised me since neither Aaron or PPK, in their roles in the Dom Scripting Task Force, didn’t feel it necessary, or weren’t allowed to tell the web standards community.

Now we are back to the day before the infamous Alist Apart article, and Zeldman flying off the door handle.

I have to ask, what have we accomplished in the last two months? Microsoft divided the web standards community. The people who were NDA’ed were strung up to look like idiots (PPK was surprised at yesterday’s IE about face, which just seems so peculiar).

Microsoft come out of this smelling of roses – there’s a distinct lack of explanation of how they are going to deal with their irate customer base when IE8 does “break their website”. Jeremy Keith is the other party who comes out of this smelling of roses.

So what have we learnt in the last two months? That NDA with Microsoft is a useless way of dealing with open standards support, or that Microsoft pulled a PR stunt on us, and beat us.

I am disappointed in Dean Hachamovitch’s implication that WaSP were the experts involved in NDA discussions in favour of this meta tag. Its clear that’s not the case, as a number of people in the core group or higher were unaware of the discussions taking place, and only knew when we knew. That doesn’t sound like participation to me.

Again, I can only stress, the problems Microsoft have are their’s and their’s alone to solve. We demand and expect standard’s compliancy by default, we should not have to be embroiled in Microsoft politics, and waste what precious time we have staving off the threats of a software behemoth.

I suggest that, in future, NDA agreements with Microsoft when the subject is their unconditional support of web standards is not acceptable. The people who dealt with them under NDA have been made to be silly, their reputation tarnised and their credibility has taken a beating.

Of all the parties over the last few months, I feel sorry for Zeldman. He got suckerpunched in a big way. Becoming the defacto spokesman for something that goes against the grain of standards compliance, and sacrificed forwards compatibility, for what? The promise that Microsoft would be nice?

I’m a bit disappointed that there wasn’t a clear voice from WaSP. I understand that this issue divided, and tested the loyalty of many people. I think WaSP failed to live up to its name, and as such, lost credibility by not having a clear voice to the web standards community that look to it for direction and sense.

The round table was a really good idea, but far too late. The issue and the standpoints had been severely solidified long before the transcript made an appearance.

I agree with Shelley – I believe Microsoft when they actually ship some working code. At the moment they are just words on a blog (and not much of an explanation of the about face, and why its now seen as acceptable when it was out of the question before).

Looking forward – what exactly is IE8 going to break in terms of scripting. I find it disappointing that we’re a week before IE8 beta is available, and there’s very little solid information as to what Dom methods, attributes are going to break, how and why, and the type of fixes that are required to undo the damage inflicted because of IE7 and IE6.

#25 On March 4th, 2008 9:03 am Matt Rossi replied:

This is great. The more versions of IE they put out the more likely people are to upgrade, or at least that is what I think anyway. So it is a win win for us.

#26 On March 4th, 2008 9:30 am Diego Eis replied:

Great decision!

Any non-standards aware developers will need to be educated, this is the right way to great web.

#27 On March 4th, 2008 10:34 am WaSP Member ccasciano replied:

Ali Sattari,

And the nightmare for non-standard designers begins here :)

They’ve been living in nightmare for some time now. Many years in fact. Maybe that will come around to some more people this time around, but I think the IE7 launch after such a long period of “stability” in the browser marketplace was enough to wake some of those web developers.

But there are others that this change may impact besides the ‘non-standard web designers’. From MS’s POV a group that often gets missed in our community’s discussions are the corporate installs and intranets and other non-public browser based content.

Though I’m less sympathetic to the large companies that have more conciously chosen to go MS centric with their web technologies in this space, I’m much more sympathetic to MS having to keep these customers happy. I think with a little education about a stopgap ‘use the IE7 metatag and do nothing’ and some follow up education about the benefits of what IE8 has added from the more standard based side MS can keep both those clients and those of us working on the more public arena happy.

Faruk,

To some extent maybe, but nothing on the scale of Internet Explorer.

I beg to differ a bit here because I think we have been here before over the years.

- MS has had box model changes. And have had to deal with corporate customers weary of upgrades and compatibility a few times before IE7.
- IE Mac certainly was a disruptive force
- Safari came into the world offering a whole new set of features from a player that didn’t exist at all.
- Going back even longer there was the Netscape 4 to Gecko jump.

Some of these offer compatibility issues going in the forward direction, and some going in the opposite direction, but all create concerns and require benefits of standards vs. stagnation to the vendor in some fashion.

#28 On March 4th, 2008 12:13 pm minimal design replied:

Wow… I’m… amazed!

Microsoft != Evil…

I will have to get used to that one! ;)

This is really great news. I just read this so I’m not sure who to thank for that yet, but whoever they are: THANK YOU!

#29 On March 4th, 2008 12:15 pm minimal design replied:

“This about-face from Microsoft is a surprise, and doesn’t make sense – we don’t have all the relevant information to hand. I do recall both Aaron Gustafson and Eric Meyer explaining that this meta tag opt in was necessary, and there was no good alternative.”

Eric Meyer was opposed to the default, he didn’t make it clear on ALA, but he did on his blog where he even mentioned that he tried to convince the guys at MS for about an hour.

#30 On March 4th, 2008 12:36 pm Robin Massart replied:

Good news.

I reckon the real reason for the about turn is that they finally realised that having to support IE99 through to IE7 in IE100 was going to cost more than they could make in Windows Vista sales. :-)

Thank you MS for listening and all those who were so vocal in their objection against this idea.

#31 On March 4th, 2008 3:28 pm WaSP Member plauke replied:

isofarro, i couldn’t have said it better!

microsoft announce a horrible move, the community cries out, then they revert back to a slightly less horrible move (with the version switching meta still intact), and the populace rejoices. isn’t that basic negotiating? always ask for more than what you’re likely to get, so that your fallback appears like a compromise?

WaSP credibility? what credibility? after this fiasko, it’s really a big question mark…then again, i’m just a humble taskforce member, not even privy to the mumbling that happen in the hallowed halls of full members…

and where’s that big “other browsers should adopt this meta tag” optimism that permeated aaron’s article on ALA? was it slightly tempered by the “meh!” response from ALL other browsers?

#32 On March 4th, 2008 3:29 pm WaSP Member plauke replied:

oh yeh, forgot…”hooray!” or some such. IE will behave like all other browsers do!

#33 On March 4th, 2008 5:11 pm Mark Johnson replied:

Excellent news! Yet another reason to look forward to the year 2013 (*)!

* (2008 + ((Oct 2006 – Aug 2001) =~ 5 years)); see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Internet_Explorer#Release_history

#34 On March 4th, 2008 8:02 pm Michael Zed replied:

@faruk: “Comparing to Safari, Firefox and Opera isn’t really fair though: none of those browsers have had to deal with the majority of the web being built towards a prior version’s bugs.”

They’ve had to deal with the majority of the web being built towards Microsoft’s bugs! I believe that making a minority browser work acceptably in this climate is nothing short of heroic.

Now, for whatever reasons, Microsoft has decided to suck it up and deal with their own legacy on slightly more even terms. Methinks that in the long run, it will be better for everyone.

@Rick: “Brilliant PR exercise!”
@Isofarro: “Microsoft come out of this smelling of roses”

This isn’t some carefully crafted conspiracy. Microsoft is a huge corporation, filled with diverse and conflicting interests, especially surrounding their web browser (which doesn’t just browse web pages, but interacts in various ways with their operating system, databases, and enterprise and office software).

Maybe this change of heart was partly prompted by someone taking notice of an unexpected backlash from web developers dedicated to standards, regardless of which default one believes to be best. Perhaps it also has something to do with new policies regarding standards, in the wake of being hit with a 900-million euro fine. Maybe we’ll never know. Such is dealing with bigcorps.

Anyway, I think that this week things are looking better than they did last week. Perhaps the conservative default would have prevented problems with some proportion of transitional sites. But that would have been nothing compared to the problems that Microsoft, the users of its web browser, and we web creators would be facing for the foreseeable future if they hadn’t changed their corporate mind.

#35 On March 5th, 2008 2:42 am Daniel replied:

I will only believe it when IE renders and handles a button-tag correctly and doesn’t try to save application/xml local.

#36 On March 5th, 2008 6:02 am Robin replied:

Isofarro – you’ve somehow transcribed my mind.

#37 On March 5th, 2008 7:51 am The Teacher replied:

Hi,

I just read the announcement on the blog. It doesn’t seem to say anything about the support for XHTML.

Many people suggest that if the browser is strictly going to follow the standards (HTML 4.01 Strict), it becomes secondary that whether it will truly support XHTML or not, because forcing the browsers to follow the standards was one of the most important goals of creating XHTML.

However, I believe that if IE 8 doesn’t implement XHTML, there is no guarantee that it will never again move away from the web standards in the future. I kinda feel that XHTML can lock MS with the standards and that is why they have tried to avoid true implementation of XHTML.

#38 On March 5th, 2008 1:18 pm WaSP Member hmkoltz replied:

Considering the widespread penetration of Windows and related applications, wouldn’t it be nice if Microsoft helped by joining in on the Outreach and Education aspect of standards and informed its own consumers about the changes?

MS could do so with software or application updates and helpful reminders or tips in its applications. MS could also offer up resources and pointers about where to find more information about Web standards.

It would make standards advocacy work a lot easier, and adoption of standards move ahead.

#39 On March 11th, 2008 10:34 am Alastair Revell replied:

I think that this is a really important announcement from Microsoft and will certainly promote a more standards compliant web, which is sorely needed.

We have recently conducted some research into just how many web sites adhere to technical standards and legal requirements. The findings are fairly grim!

Alastair Revell
Managing Consultant
Revell Research Systems

#40 On March 27th, 2008 3:13 pm Lawk Salih replied:

MS has no choice but to listen.

#41 On April 1st, 2008 4:12 pm Best Of March 2008 | Best of the Month | Smashing Magazine replied:

[...] Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 releasedMicrosoft released the first beta of Internet Explorer 8. Among new features the integration of pseudo-classes :after and :before. IE8 improves rendering of content authored to various web standards in standards mode. The new version features an enhanced and standardized DOM that brings it in line with implementations in other browsers. Additionally, IE8 has dramatically enhanced AJAX support with features like DOM: Storage, Cross Document Messaging (XDM) and the Selectors APIs. And (hurrah, hurrah): IE8 will use Standards mode by default. Details, comments, analysis and ideas. And, finally, IE8 Readiness Toolkit for web-developers. [...]

#42 On April 1st, 2008 6:15 pm Best Of March 2008 - juliomarroquin.com replied:

[...] Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 releasedMicrosoft released the first beta of Internet Explorer 8. Among new features the integration of pseudo-classes :after and :before. IE8 improves rendering of content authored to various web standards in standards mode. The new version features an enhanced and standardized DOM that brings it in line with implementations in other browsers. Additionally, IE8 has dramatically enhanced AJAX support with features like DOM: Storage, Cross Document Messaging (XDM) and the Selectors APIs. And (hurrah, hurrah): IE8 will use Standards mode by default. Details, comments, analysis and ideas. And, finally, IE8 Readiness Toolkit for web-developers. [...]

#43 On May 17th, 2008 1:34 am Adaptiv Media replied:

I really cannot wait for Microsoft to start competing with Firefox again. I’ve just downloaded the Beta for IE8 and am expecting some significant improvement on IE7. All I noticed from IE6 to IE7 was a cosmetic difference that was probably made to fit in with Vista’s look & feel. Better client-side scripting support is what i’m looking for primarily. Widespread CSS support between all new browsers would be great but that would mean there is lesser competition between browsers. If Silverlight takes off and IE8 has made significant improvements, it seems that for web designers and developers like myself, we may have to once again endorse Internet Explorer over Firefox. I’ll let you guys know what I think of IE8.

#44 On May 28th, 2008 5:58 pm Heimann Michael replied:

Wow that sounds like it’s making some huge progress. Maybe they’ve fixed all annoying bugs.
Does anybody know wheter thy build it 4 Windows XP or only for Vista. Will it be possible to get this for Mac OS?

#45 On May 29th, 2008 3:11 pm Davinci replied:

I will only believe it when IE renders and handles a button-tag correctly and doesn’t try to save xml local.

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