Internet Explorer 8 aims for standard compliance
- Date: December 19th, 2007
- Author: Paul Mah
- Category: News
- Tags: Compliance, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Corp., Web Browsers, Internet, Paul Mah
Details of Internet Explorer 8 have been scarce, but you can get a sneak peek in the form of an half hour video with Internet Explorer’s GM Dean Hachamovitch and Architect Chris Wilson.
The key takeaway here is that IE will finally be able to render one of the toughest Web standards and compliance test — the Acid 2 test — correctly.
Microsoft originally intended to add additional compliance support into IE7 (including the Acid 2 test), but it didn’t make it into the shipping build. It was then put in a low priority on the bottom of a large “wish list” of improvements for future updates, but to no avail as Microsoft focused its resources on building IE8.
It might be worth noting that competing browsers, like Opera and Apple’s Safari, have been compliant for the last few years. Mozilla’s upcoming Firefox 3 is also set to pass the Acid 2 test (although the current Firefox 2 does not).
I imagine that not having to work around some of the non-standard rendering behavior (and bugs) in Internet Explorer will be excellent news for Web developers. Unfortunately, there is still no word on a release date.
