Internet Explorer 8 To Push Standards-Based Webpages
The anticipated Internet Explorer session at Mix 07, while not containing a preview of IE8, did contain a good amount of details about the direction IE is heading, and some of what you can expect when IE8 hits next year.
The most interesting info centers on web standards. According to Mary Jo Foley’s report of the session, IE8 will encourage web designers to create websites that adhere to web standards, and allow them to opt-in to a standards mode if they meet that criteria. Microsoft doesn’t want to be accused of breaking web pages anymore, by no longer supporting problems from older versions of IE, so if more pages are standards-based, the responsibility for breaking web pages rests with developers, not IE.
Wilson said to expect Microsoft to be investing across layout, object model and Ajax development fronts in IE 8.0. Specificially, Wilson said Microsoft is investing in making IE 8.0 more compliant with CSS 2.1 layout standards. Microsoft also is working to make the IE 8.0 object model more interoperable with that used by other browsers, and is looking to provide more client-side application programming interfaces (APIs) to support local storage for mash-ups, Wilson said.
Good for them. If IE is standards compliant, and all other browsers hopefully will be as well, then browsers can compete on interface and features, not how they render pages, and pages can be expected to work the same way everywhere.
“Good for them. If IE is standards compliant, and all other browsers hopefully will be as well, then browsers can compete on interface and features, not how they render pages, and pages can be expected to work the same way everywhere.”
This is what web developers for years have been crying out for. This is a positive announcement for IE, but overall it is
not ‘good for them’ as its a disgrace it will take this long to have come about.
Comment by Aaron | May 3, 2007
[…] have slipped my mind, and many places where IE isn’t the only browser messing up. Microsoft claims that they will be making a big push to catch up on compliance with modern web standards in Internet […]
Pingback by Technical Learnings of Internet Explorer for Make Benefit Glorious Applications of Web at Ignite Realtime | May 23, 2007