SilverStripe

The Internet Explorer 8 doctype smackdown

Posted by Sigurd on 11 February 2008

Over recent weeks, and at Kiwifoo (pictured), there's been some considerable debate about Microsoft's proposed features of the Internet Explorer 8 release.

Microsoft has failed to upgrade a large percentage of their browser users from v6 to v7 because many intranets and web-applications were not designed for standards, and so break when you upgrade. Microsoft's suggestion is for webpages to indicate they are 'compatible' with newer versions of IE, so that existing pages don't break. This doesn't allow sites broken in IE6 to work, and is fraught with other problems, athough it is similar to how the problem of breaking the web has been dealt with in the past.

FireFox, Safari, and Opera work closely with each other, and use a public, open process for their browser development and genuinely strive for consensus with the developer community about their direction. Microsoft would be wise to follow suit if they genuinely wanted to reclaim marketshare and goodwill with the web developer community.

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3 Comments Tags: kiwifoo, standards