Finally talking about IE8

Finally talking about IE8 20 Dec 2007 09:01

So a bit of new news today about Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) which has been getting a bit of interest since Bill Gates started talking about it. Have a read of the official post here and there is also a video up on Channel9 - note: no new chrome yet.

One of the talking points in the current round of information is the major milestone that IE8 as of last week renders Acid2 correctly (when in Standards Mode), bringing it inline with Opera, Safari, Konquerer and Firefox 3. This is awesome news and a great step forward from a standards perspective!!

The discussion around how IE8 standards mode actually works is likely to bring up a bit of debate and probably contention; as a bit of a background on this - most modern browsers render in two different modes, quirks mode and standards mode. There is also an "almost standards mode" for browsers that are almost there but not quite - such as IE7 and Firefox 2.

Based on the DOCTYPE of the page the browser will determine which mode it will use to render. IE8 is going to work the same in this regard, however its "quirks" mode is described as being IE7 compatible rendering as based on DOCTYPE, with standards mode being opt-ed into by inserting a new HEAD tag. So this means that XHTML 1.0 Strict is not going to render in standards mode?!? (but in IE7 compatible almost standards mode)

Sounds a bit iffy to me. I personally hope that they reverse on this one and simply render based on the DOCTYPE. The rational given is simply one of backwards compatibility and minimising the impact on customers who have sites deployed that render correctly under IE7 today but would break under IE8s new standards compatible rendering. Clearly there are pro's and con's in either direction..

While we are still not likely to see it anytime in the near future it sounds like we will be starting to get some CTP and Beta drops a few months into the New Year (Mix08 anyone?) and the team can start blogging about it; So for now its back to waiting :)

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