IE8 Won't Behave Like IE7 By Default

Tue, 03/04/2008 - 16:03 — jh

Holy sanity, Batman! They really did it.

Now we won't have to opt-out (out of the IE7 mode) and still get the most standards compliant rendering IE is capable of. Having things the way they used to be (or rather supposed to be) is a big relief for me. I'm really glad they didn't went ahead with their insane plan to ruin the web.

They kept the targeting mechanism tho. I still think it's stupid, but that's their problem not mine. ;)

jh's blog

Comments

Tue, 03/04/2008 - 23:50 — Anonymous

Tag for Backward compatibility

They should have a tagging system for IE7 and below rendering.
That way they won't penalise developers who follow standards, but just the lazy developers (who probably prefer adding a tag instead of upgrading to standards).

Wed, 03/05/2008 - 00:10 — jh

It's opt-in

So, you can use version targeting if you want to. Originally they planned to use the IE7 mode by default and the IE8 one only if you explicitly ask for it by using that meta tag (or those extra header).

Now you'll get the IE8 one by default and only the IE7 one if you ask for it, which is a lot more sensible from my point of view. I always wrote CSS for modern browsers and used override style sheets (loaded via conditional comments) for specific IE versions. If the next IE doesn't need any special tweaks it will work fine out of the box. And well, if it does need extra attention it won't clutter up the primary style sheet(s).

So far the amount of necessary tweaks declined with each version. Eventually you won't have to add anything for simpler sites and maybe a few small tweaks for bigger ones. That's fine with me. It's certainly better than piling up legacy cruft for all eternity or using yet another IE specific tag.

Conditional comments are already bad enough, but they serve a very specific absolutely required need: keeping my CSS clean. Whereas the opt-out version targeting tag (aka "Yes, I really really want to use the most standards compatible rendering and this time I mean it" tag) would have only added cruft without doing anything for me. So, yea... I'm really glad they decided to do it the other way around.

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