Comments on: IE8 – Standards Compliant? Yeah Right!

By: Nicholas Piasecki

Nicholas Piasecki — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 02:25:41 +0000

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.

By: dmex

dmex — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 19:37:43 +0000

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

By: dmex

dmex — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 19:35:13 +0000

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_ballmer

Steven

By: Ames

Ames — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 02:36:51 +0000

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.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:42:43 +0000

Oh shit! Chris, I think they heard you. *points to my topic on GeekSMack*

By: mike

mike — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 01:05:47 +0000

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.

By: Jason Burgess

Jason Burgess — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 05:50:23 +0000

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.

By: Ames

Ames — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 05:20:26 +0000

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 RTM

But 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.

By: Mooglesan

Mooglesan — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 03:53:08 +0000

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.