IE8 – Standards Compliant? Yeah Right!
Like many others, when Microsoft announced at MIX08 that Internet Explorer 8 would be standards compliant, I was extremely pleased that they made a decision to finally conform to the standards that have been around for years. Bottom line is, this was what we all wanted Microsoft to do years ago.
So all is good in IE8 land right? Wrong. Internet Explorer 8’s ideas of compliance is breaking websites that ARE standards compliant. How exactly is this possible? It’s simple, IE8 is NOT standards compliant. The simple fact that the browser passed the acid2 test does not mean that it is compliant. This can be confirmed by putting IE8 through the Acid3 test. The abysmal score of 12/100 leaves a LOT to be desired.
So, what should Microsoft do at this point? Well they will tell you that they are working on the problem and working towards a compliant model, and that IE8 will indeed not be fully compliant. But I have an alternate solution to offer up. How about ditching the Trident engine altogether? By doing this, Microsoft would be getting rid of the largest thorn in the side of web developers all over the world. So my solution is simple, use another engine, preferably Webkit. By doing this the hard work is already done for them, the browser will be fully standards compliant, and Microsoft can focus on adding real features and innovation to the browser, instead of wasting all their time on an obviously broken engine.
What are your thoughts about this? I’m curious to see how the community feels about the current state of Internet Explorer 8.
9 Responses to 'IE8 – Standards Compliant? Yeah Right!'
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Microsoft will not ditch the Trident engine because they’ve already poured too much work into it, although with the way that they up and ditched GDI+ acceleration (you know, the thing they’ve been working on now for years) in Windows Vista, nothing surprises me these days.
One thing I can guarantee you is this – there is no way in hell that Microsoft will adopt Webkit, or even Gecko. Why? Because other, better browsers are using those engines and they would look as if they had succumb to defeat.
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November 6, 2008 at 12:20 am
Ames:
Acid3 tests against CSS3, a spec which is not even finalized. Microsoft has stated they are going for full CSS 2.1 compatibility and they are very near to that. As for problems with current Standards Compliant websites, most of the issues I’ve come across relate to the following:
1. The site tests for IE and delivers a “IE compatibile” version which in effect breaks IE8. This is easy for website administrators to fix, they just need to test for IE < 8. This is quite common apparently.
2. The site uses CSS3 features in its “standards compatible” mode because most Standards Compatible browsers have implemented some CSS3 support.
3. IE8 has bugs. Its a Beta, and I guess some are to be expected (floats for example have severe issues) These should be fixed by RTMBut I think calling IE8 not standards compliant is unfair. I don’t think the CSS3 spec should be taken into account because it isn’t finished yet.
On the other hand, if you can point out some CSS2 features IE8 doesn’t support (that isn’t due to a bug) I’ll definitely reconsider.
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November 6, 2008 at 12:50 am
Jason Burgess:
I read this explanation of why Microsoft doesn’t use Open Source code a while back (http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2007/05/02/why-microsoft-can-t-ship-open-source-code.aspx). For those reasons, we’ll probably never see Microsoft ship a web browser based on a rendering engine they didn’t write.
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November 6, 2008 at 8:05 pm
mike:
IE8 is NOT compliant in anyway. What microsoft is trying to do is make everyone adhere to what THEIR standards are. I bleieve in one of the keynotes, they made reference to IE8 and passing acid3 test and pretty much saying that ACID3 is too strict and needs to comform with THEIR standards. haha. btw the only browser I noticed that got 100/100 was google chrome.
although it shouldn’t have passed because java/script implimentations are yet to be desired in that POS browser. -
Oh shit! Chris, I think they heard you. *points to my topic on GeekSMack*
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November 7, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Ames:
IE8 is standards compliant (well for the most part anyways, its got the odd bug here or there indicative of a beta product). Everyones using ACID3 as a measure of standards compliance when the CSS3 spec hasn’t even been finalized yet. I’m not saying Microsoft shouldn’t support CSS3, just that to be “standards complaint” they don’t currently have to.
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November 16, 2008 at 2:35 pm
dmex:
If you guys heard Steve Ballmer in Sydney last week, A student asked him the same question about why they continued to support IE considering the amount of problems everyone has with either standards or security…He did say they have been considering adoping another Engine…(Watch the Video of him at Sydney, Its proberly the funniest he has done)
You can also checkout this atricle if you dont want to watch the video
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/266449/microsoft_interested_open_source_browser_ballmerSteven
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November 16, 2008 at 2:37 pm
dmex:
Checkout the Video of Steve Ballmer in Sydney last week, He did mention Microsoft have been looking into another Engine after a question from a Student…
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/266449/microsoft_interested_open_source_browser_ballmer
Steven
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November 26, 2008 at 9:25 pm
The company that I work for has four stylesheets in a cascade:
Skiviez.css — used by all browsers in the entire world
Skiviez-InternetExplorer6.css — adds hacks for IE6
Skiviez-InternetExplorer7.css — adds hacks for IE7
Skiviez-InternetExplorer8.css — adds hacks for IE8
Notice a pattern? You don’t see Safari2, Safari3, Firefox2, Firefox3 variants in that list.
We also discovered that the broke absolute positioning within fixed position elements: http://piasecki.name/ie8b2/IE8B2-Position-Bug.html May be fixed in a later build, not sure.
November 5, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Mooglesan: