IEBlog

That's great. When will you support alpha transparency in PNG?

Thanks, on behalve of the forward-looking web :)

Thank you.

Larry: you’re kidding, alpha transparency is supported since IE7.

Just now the IE team announced that it's reversing its policy on the default behaviour of IE8, which shows that it has been paying close attention to the discussion of its versioning proposal. I admit that I hadn't expected this reversal, but I welcome

Oh, happy day. I appreciate that you not only listened, but reacted. Wonderful news.

IE8 will act like IE8, not IE7. We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the

Excellent news!

Any chance IE8 will support application/xhtml+xml MIME type while we are at it?

Thank you, thank you, thank you for listening!

GREAT!

Thanks, and thanks for listening.

Hi, that is awesome news! I don't think I expected it to happen so I am very pleasantly surprised!

good decision. i suspect it was not an easy one for you, but it will help us all keep progressing forward.

thanks.

Two words: Thank you.

Thank you for listening, thank you for giving the web a chance. Thanks for changing focus. I think this just made my day.

Thank you for listening to the community on this one.  I'm glad that I won't have to provide specific instructions to support standards in IE8.

From Dean H. over on the IE Blog : One issue we heard repeatedly during the IE7 beta concerned sites

I applaud you guys. Thank you for listening to the community... really. I feel more and more like there's a change in certain areas of Microsoft.

Now we can have our customer support push IE users people to upgrade to IE8. (And not keep telling people to install Firefox)

It feels like sunshine shining down. Thanks for listening.

Thank you! Glad to see a new side of Microsoft listening to the community. Standards are the future.

Much better choice. This is exactally how I would expect it to work. And was wondering why all the pandering. The standards mode should always be the default. Previous rendering modes/engines should have to be specified by the html in some way.

Bravo!!!

BOb

So IE8 will deliberately break certain Web pages in an attempt to ward off legal liability. This is unfortunate, but probably the best that could be expected given the current legal climate. What I don't understand is why some people think this is somehow "better."

I am incredibly happy to see Microsoft actually taking a sane approach to supporting standards, and listening to developers feedback.  

It seems like Microsoft hasn't given me much to praise in a while, and I hope this is a beginning to a new trend.

Wow! Thankyou thankyou thankyou!

I just want to add my voice to the chorus of thanks: thank you for listening to the community.

Good to hear, I liked IE8 before and I like it even better now.

It just shows that Microsoft is a huge company regardless of certain evidence to the contrary, there are a large number of developers working there who are as dedicated to the greater-good of technology as anyone. I've always felt the IE team's goals were in the right place and I'm more than happy to be justified in that belief. Now if we can just get webdav support back in IE... (there's always an if, isn't there?).

Thanks for doing the right thing. :)

From the bottom of my heart: "THANK YOU".

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU.

Bravo!  I applaud your eagerness to learn, grow, and adapt.  IE is now becoming no longer an enemy/annoyance to designers but a welcome addition to the choices in web browsers.

I am genuinely surprised by this announcement, this is fantastic news.

Thanks.

Thanks for listening.

I hope you can also get away with not freezing rendering engine versions at all in the future, so that content="IE=8" will be exactly the same as content="IE=9" and so forth, and that there will really be just one version of the web.

But I guess that will be mostly up to us web devs. I hope we'll be up to the task.

I have to say kudos to the IE Team for listening to the web community.  I'm not an IE user, but I still care about IE's development, since the majority of the world uses it.

Thank you very much.

Looks like, now, that you [IE team] can stash away those Groucho Marx eyeglass disguises as you walk out into the campus parking lot.

I LIKE that answer, Dean. I like it a lot.

Great news! Thanks for making this very important change!

this is good to hear, it will make for a happier SxSw this weekend, and also as a standardista web developer I think any other tactics apart from this way is the correct way for the future of IE and your web browser share

Hey, that is great.  I have criticized IE before, but let me offer the team my praise for doing the right thing here.

Great! You really are listening, then. That's a good sign. Keep up the good work and let's get rid of IE6 together. IE8 sound great so far.

Thank you oh so much.

I'm still going to leave that silly IE=edge flag active on the servers and applications under my control for a little while longer, but really, excellent news.

Awesome. Now make sure you KEEP LISTENING.

We'll sure as hell KEEP WATCHING.

Wascawy wabbits.

How about cats+dogs MIME support plz.

Great to hear about your standards approach! Looking forward to users having browser choice without developer pain.

Seriously, thank you. I hope this is the result of someone at MS actually starting to care, and that this is not just a PR stunt to shout "MS cares about standards!", or to avoid more lawsuits. I think you still have a little ways to go to prove to me that this is the first step towards many great changes, but this is a giant leap of a first step.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

You've been kicked (a good thing) - Trackback from DotNetKicks.com

This is great news!  Thanks!

Now, I'm going to continue to cross my fingers and wait for MIX08 news on the IE8 standards support...

From a cleanliness/elegance point of view, I applaud this decision.  But from a practical point of view, it must be recognized that IE8 will indeed break sites designed around IE7's standards mode if those sites are not updated to either explicitly request IE7 standards mode or to work with IE8 by default (and gracefully downgrade the experience for IE7).  

There will be sites that aren't updated to do either (maybe the web devs are no longer available, or whatever), and these sites will break on IE8.  So I would request that IE8 provide a way for the user to request that a page be rendered via IE7's standards mode.  So if an IE8 user visits a site that has not been updated to explicitly request IE7 standards mode and sees that the site looks like crap, she can click a button to rerender the site in IE7 standards mode.

Most of the respondents here are web devs that couldn't care less about breaking old sites, but users will indeed care.

That's good news.  Credit where it's due - well done, IE folks.

Thanks for biting the bullet on this one.  I appreciate that the IE team listens to feedback.

Only fools don't change their mind. I'm glad you did. Thanks.

I second and third the comments stating that this is a positive move for Microsoft, the Web and caffeine-addicted Web Developers.

Maybe you should post one of those monkey dance videos of Steve Ballmer shouting "Developers! Developers! Developers!"

Go on, let's celebrate good times!

Thank god. I was not looking forward to being required to use a special meta/header just to be able to use the correct version of standards mode (correct being better anyway). This is a smart move on your part and I'm glad you came around!

Hey Now IE8,

I along with everyone sure is looking forward to this browser.

Thx 4 the info,

Catto

Many of us are behind you 100%

Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you! This blog post has single-handedly restored my faith in Microsoft. :)

It's one thing to publish a set of interoperability principles, and it's quite another to put your money where your mouth is and actually follow them even when that decision may mean some short-term pain. Kudos.

"So I would request that IE8 provide a way for the user to request that a page be rendered via IE7's standards mode.  So if an IE8 user visits a site that has not been updated to explicitly request IE7 standards mode and sees that the site looks like crap, she can click a button to rerender the site in IE7 standards mode.

Most of the respondents here are web devs that couldn't care less about breaking old sites, but users will indeed care."

While I agree with you here, do you really think that the typical computer user is going to know that they A) need to turn on IE7 mode through some trigger, and B) will even know that this exists? Most are just going to leave the page or accept it as if it were meant to be that way.

No matter which way the developers go here, there's always someone that loses out. The meta tag "switch" is a good idea (much better than the stupid xml prolog to kick in quirks...my god) and even the most undereducated of developers can add this in with ease. My opinion is that it is the lesser of 2 evils.

Also, if we require the meta/header trick for this version, it would likely become the requirement to "flip the switch" on all future versions of IE. Using it as a BC tool? I love that idea (now and future).

Thank you Microsofttttttttttttttttttttttttt! Thank youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu! keep up the good work!

Brilliant! Thanks for listening - this is excellent news.

Now we need a faster pos-developing and bug fixing,perhaps this is the beginning of a more active IE Team?

I can't wait to gouge my eyes while correcting a whole new set of flaws in yet another IE.

Thanks Microsoft & the IE team!

I preferred the previous way of handling this - this is a case of either favouring customers or developers.  With this new change, customers lose out since there is a lot more broken on the web, developers lose since they have to pay more money to make sure sites work with IE8.  Browser competitors win since IE takes another compatibility hit.

And just remember there are far more customers than developers out there.  Does MS ever think that the OSS advocates are driving these kind of changes so that MS loses ground?  Just look at the negative press on vista, and its a terrific OS.  Look at OOXML and the negative press surrounding that, I sure hope that MS doesn't give more into what really is a false perception.

Thank you IE team, you have just earned yourselves a great deal of respect from the standards community, you have made the right decision and commend you. This certainly beats my previous position wherein I was preparing to drop support for IE completely.

Thank you for listening to the community.

Respect.

As one of the critics of the former decision, a big thank you! Hopefully you'll continue to listen to feedback.

Thanks! I understand this must have been a tough decision. I can't even imagine what problems that this will cause to all the existing websites and what a big testing effort it will create for the web developers.

However this is less messy and the best way to get things set straight again. It will be a tough transition that might cause even more people to move away from IE, but we really need this done sooner rather than later. A few years down the road we will all gain from it.

There is a god! Thank you so much IE team you guys rock! Despite what others have said, you guys truly do care about web standards. I'm sure there will still be naysayers but stick with it.

This is excellent news! A seemingly rare example of Microsoft doing The Right Thing - hopefully the start of a trend :)

You've really made my day - thanks for listening!

This is great news!  I fully support this change of default behavior to encourage better interoperability.  I think it is a very good idea to default to latest standards, otherwise IE11 will still be defaulting to IE7 mode for compatibility.  Pages can still explicitly ask for IE7 compatibility if it is necessary.  I am very glad to see that the IE team has responded to the developer communities concerns and changed its mind.

Excellent work Dean. congratulations to you and the IE8 team, you've made the right choice and made the lives of web developers around the world much easier!

I think this is the most praise I've ever seen on the IEBlog. Let's see if Slashdot is as forgiving...lol!

This is a great start, but why not stop calling it "Super Standards" mode and stop requiring extra steps in our code to use it?

This is easy:

STANDARDS MODE = Web Standards Compliant

QUIRKS MODE = NON Web Standards Compliant, meaning IE7, IE6, IE5, IE4, etc etc etc etc etc.

This is fantastic news! The Internet Explorer Team is in the unenviable position of being the market leader, and I'm sure this decision took a hell of a lot of meetings and memos to come to this conclusion. With Silverlight and .NET coming to fruition soon, I'm looking forward to seeing what Microsoft and the IE team have in store for the web in the next decade. Bravo on making the right decision, I can't wait to use Beta 1!

@GoodThings2Life

I don't care if it's called Super Dooper Hyper Standards Mode II Turbo Edition, just as long as it's on by default.

I would like to better interoperate with MSIE and this change will make it easier to develop cross-platform much more simply sometime down the road. Thanks for reversing the original decision.

/s.

Here's a new Interoperability Principle for you: make the thing capable of being installed standalone.  Don't integrate it into the browser like some sort of spinal cord.  You'll still be able to let your big-buck company friends like Adobe call the browser through some library.  You don't have to make IE8 an integral part of Windows to have it usable in other programs.

No, seriously, when are you going to support alpha on PNG files?  Every time I try it, it almost works, but then it doesn't.

For example, it doesn't print correctly.  What I expect is something that looks like the screen.  What I get is an opaque blob.

Why don't you make your own doctype?  That way all the Microsoft fan-boys can just use your IE-specific doctype, and IE will know to display the page as crap, and everyone who hates IE can use a real doctype and get real standards mode?

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//Microsoft//IE-Spagetti-Code//MSIE"

"http://www.microsoft.com/IE-IE-Spagetti-Code-Version-1.0.002.01212.transitional.dtd">

or maybe just

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC

"-//Microsoft//Fan//Boy"

"http://www.microsoft.com/fanboy.dtd">

Way to just start catching up with everybody else as of last year, guys!

Hey, I don't understand why this is so hard to overcome. Just ask developers to add a meta that tells IE8 how they are suppose to render the page and pack IE8 with the render engines of IE6 and 7... thats how you solve it.

Yes, it maybe a pain in the ass to developers to add this meta info on every page... but I am sure it will be easier that to hack the whole thing.

"I am incredibly happy to see Microsoft actually taking a sane approach to supporting standards, and listening to developers feedback."

You're assuming their IE8 standards mode will work.....but that's a big assumption.

Thank you.

This might finally let us all slowly dig out of the morass of the past.  True, there is going to be some short term pain, but we aren't talking a make or break proposition here.  Older pages will still load, even if they look a little funny - but chances are if they have enough viewers to matter, they will be fixed sooner than later.  If they are never fixed, chances are that if the author does not care, neither will the viewers (if any exist-  the web is partly a huge dead letter office)

Thank for again.  In the long run, it is the right choice.

Welcome to the 21st Century, this will save my clients money and speed up website creation.

Of course I will not be celebrating until it is actually delivered.

Another step forward. Well done.

Standards by default will increase the proportion of future documents written to standards (instead of IE quirks/proprietary). This is indeed good news.

Dean, and all involved - thanks for listening.  This is a great move for standards.

Dean, and all involved - thanks for listening.  This is a great move for standards and ultimately IE.

I'm glad to see that the final decision is the right decision. I'm not sure that I buy that it was legality issues (the Opera lawsuit?) and not the universal condemnation of web developers for the previous decision but whatever... It is still the right decision.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!! As someone who makes a living doing web design, I have been waiting for this day for years. I will *finally* be able to code without having to come up with 800 different workarounds to make things look correct in IE.

I'm extremely pleased and surprised that you guys actually listened and reversed a major decision like this. This is the right thing to do. Some sites will break in the short term, but in the long term, this is the right decision. And besides, if someone has a huge site coded around IE7, and they don't have the time or money to convert it to real standards, they can just use the meta tag to trigger IE7 rendering. Problem solved.

Thank you again!

Thanks -- that seems to be the right thing to do.

I'm  very glad to hear this!

Among other things, this means that progressive enhancement will actually work with IE8.

If IE7 had been standards compliant this issue wouldn't exist.  Just think, if you get IE8 right, you won't have to worry about this junk for IE9. And if you get IE to where it isn't embedded like a virus in the operating system, maybe people will stop hating your company.

Thank you for throwing your weight in the right direction.

The IE team never fails to impress and amaze me. I had great faith that you would make this decision!

Way to go, IE Team! You have once again made one young software developer very happy!

You guys should have held off on this announcement for another week. Then I could feel like it was a birthday present. :) The previous announcement that there even was going to be an IE8 felt like a Christmas present.

Keep the meta/http header as an option, just keep the default to what you say here. I was originally leaning towards your old default being the superior mode, but then it was pointed out that it was intranets that needed it the most and they're the ones that can use the HTTP headers the easiest.

This is HUGE.  Thank you so much!  I have been avoiding Microsoft technologies in my web work for many years (on principle, not raw technological potential), and this goes a very long way towards growing trust.

I've said some time ago that I personally would have preferred if IE8 was in standard mode by default

IE7 was a baby step; I really hope IE8 is the web standards magic bullet we've been waiting for.

Thank you for getting some sense about all of this.

Now, make IE8 something we can all be proud of.

@GoodThings2Life:

I don't think anybody at Microsoft has ever used the term "super standards" mode in the first place.  They mentioned IE8 standards, IE7 standards or IE7 strict, and Quirks.

It's also good for microsoft, at least in long term.

If ie8 will be vista-only, and if most web sites will be standards-compliant, people will have one more reason to upgrade to vista. (If they don't just stay at xp and switch ie to firefox/opera, that is :) )

Still, gratulations, that was The Right Thing (tm).

Wow, that's wonderful news. Thanks so much IE Team! It's exciting to see people thinking about the web, and while I can see the logic for the previous method (IE 8 behaving like IE 7 unless specified), this is far more standards-centric!

Wait, can someone answer this question for me?

I'm no web developer, but does this mean IE8 will be in standards mode and NOT IE7's mode by default? Does this mean it will be able to pass Acid2 without a hack to opt in? So when I upgrade to IE8 Beta, I'll be able to see that happy face by default?

If this is true, then congrats MS, you have done the right thing.

@sonicdoommario

Yes, that's exactly what it means.

I'll believe it when I see it.

Haven't read all the comments, so don't know if anyone else brought this up, but strictly as stated here I have to disagree with a lot of the comments.  This isn't, yet, "the right thing."  You've swung the pendulum from pro-user, anti-developer to anti-user, pro-developer.  That decision isn't better, it's just a different evil.

Give the user some control.  Allow a global setting to choose which mode is the default, then default that setting to standards mode.  In addition, give the user some way to override this global setting on a page and/or site level.  The meta flag provided by a page should always override both of these.  This is the only way you can be both pro-standards and not "break the web".

I know this might sound a little embarrassing, but some people here have complained about breaking old sites.  Personally, I like to think any sites that supported IE7 are already written by people smart enough to take IE8 into account - but perhaps IE8 could take the route of Safari and Opera and use a different User Agent string.

Instead of MSIE use "Microsoft Internet Explorer"

and include the string "like Gecko"

Waddaya think?

You knew it was the right thing to do...

KUDOS to the IE8 team, the web will be a better place.

Now you really need to do some insane evangelism to make sure everyone can expect this!

congrats on making a great decision! I get more and more excited about IE every version! keep up the great work!

oh. and as well as the UA tweak, don't match the generic IE condcom when in standards mode.

"Give the user some control.  Allow a global setting to choose which mode is the default, then default that setting to standards mode."

Knowing Microsoft, there's probably already a registry setting indicating whether to default to standards mode or not.

"In addition, give the user some way to override this global setting on a page and/or site level.  The meta flag provided by a page should always override both of these.  This is the only way you can be both pro-standards and not "break the web"."

Agreed. :)

Hello all,

I'm very happy Microsoft and its IE dev. team made this decision... a rather unexpected decision too. Thank you for listening and understanding.

Best regards,

Gérard Talbot

Bravo!  I was one of the man web designers who had some issues with the previously announced approach, and I think this is truly the right decision.  Thanks for being so open to feedback from the community, and I look forward to the beta of IE8.

I truly never thought I'd see the day that the original proposal would be reversed, but here it is and I applaud whole-heartedly.

Thank you so very much for listening and responding to the criticism so many of us had for the plan as proposed. Switching the default changes X-UA-Compatible from an imposition to a safety net, which is a fantastic move.

So, what exactly happens to IE7's "quirks mode"?

I love that my site renders just great under quirks mode - no need to mess with this BS everytime a new release comes out - it just works.

wonderful news, thank you IE team!

Can we get the old style border box model in standards compliant mode thanks, it's much more intuitive.

Please...

这是否意味着很多在IE7下浏览正常的页面，在IE8下会出问题呢？

It's mean many pages looked fine in IE7,will looked bad in IE8?

thank you for adhering to standards.

there are some things you can take your own path on...  rendering HTML and CSS should not be one of them  :)

Thank you for this decision.  All is right in the IT world, once again.

Hey!  Let's not forget who and what created "quirks mode".  It's Microsoft's error that this had been foisted upon us.  Other browsers had to duplicate this error due to Microsoft's monopoly of the desktop.  Don't compare this MS screw up with anything other browsers do or any de facto "standard".

And let's not make web sites work with IE as requested above.  Let's make web sites work with the standards, as it should be.  It's Microsoft's responsibility and duty to comply with the standard and not ours.  

Dean, quit pushing your work off on us.  It's YOUR fault, Microsoft's fault, that all this happened.  Fix your own problems.  It's your turn to compete in the market place.  Microsoft is losing market share now.  Other companies have lived, and died, by bad past decisions.  Live or die by yours but don't expect us to go down with the ship.

Thank you very much :)

This is definitely a step in the right direction for Microsoft and will hopefully bring Internet Explorer near to the standard of other browsers.

This is good news, as it means that there should be less "IE Hacks" in CSS, for example.  Also, by providing better support for things such as alpha transparency, IE8 can help with the integration of the Desktop and Web experiences.

Supporting standards will also help IE in the long run - not having to worry about backwards compatibility and legacy rendering modes will mean that IE9 or IE10 shouldn't have much of a need for an IE8 mode - reducing complexity.

@Rob: Get a clue.  

Netscape and Microsoft and bit players all "created quirks" as they rushed to add functionality during the so-called "Browser wars."  Blaming Quirks on Microsoft is absurd.

@Rob,

 We could be mature here. It looks like they are trying to get back on track; the least we can do is applaud any positive steps they make.

Thank goodness.  It probably won't be nearly as big a problem as it was with IE6->7 because IE6's so-called "standards" mode was a total joke, whereas IE7 is a lot better-that is, as far as it would affect most sites I would guess the difference between IE6 and 7 in standards mode is a lot greater than that between 7 and 8.

This is music to my ears!  I have recently been doing some development for Safari 3.0 (which already supports most of what we'll see in IE8), and I can tell you it's going to be fun to be a web developer.

I am anxiously awaiting more details about exactly which standards will be supported.  I'm sure this is still a work in progress, but if you can keep blogging about features whenever you can, I for one will be grateful.

Thanks for much for listening!!!!

Thanks. I and many other web developers really appreciate this.

There have been some really positive things coming out of Microsoft, some of them resulting from feedback on this blog, improved standards conformance and this (to name 2). Keep up the good work.

On behalf of all web developers everywhere; thank you.

IE8 represents a massive turning point in the level of standards