Internet Explorer 8.0 to pass Acid 2 Test

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With Beta 1 targeted for first half 2008, the folks at Microsoft are now saying that as of last week, IE8 reached a core milestone: IE8 in standards mode now correctly renders the “Acid2 Browser Test”. Acid2 is a test that determines how well a browser works with several different web standards. I posted about this earlier, mentioning that not even the current edition of Firefox handles the acid2 test correctly. Of course I was quickly reminded by commenters that it did a much better job than IE7, and that's true.

But the best news (besides the obvious fact that Microsoft embraces and sees the need for standards) is that they are going to do it in a way that doesn't "break" existing pages written for IE5 or IE6, or for the standards mode of other browser brands:
Modern browsers typically have two modes to render web pages, “quirks” and “standards.” MS says their experience with releasing IE7 taught them that many web sites today expect the browser to have IE6-compatible behavior. They say that with IE8 they have a "deep obligation" to interoperability and compatibility with existing web sites, and this has led them to add an additional mode to enable supporting industry standards even better.

So, developers can now write sites based on standards, insert a flag that tells IE to render in IE8 standards mode, and IE will then switch its rendering engine to use this new mode. This allows pre-existing sites to continue to work, and developers can opt-in to the new rendering engine on their own schedule. (Of course I should hasten to add that if all the players were with standards from the git-go, there wouldn't be a need for any of this BS).

For compatibility purposes IE8’s rendering engine defaults to “quirks” or “standards” mode. Site developers will need to insert a new opt-in flag to request the page to render using “IE8 standards mode.”

Overall, I'd say that this is pretty good news. I might even sign up for the beta. Now I just have one question:

When I visit a site that has embedded Flash or other video, is IE 8.0 still going to grey-screen on me and go straight down the potty, forcing me to use Firefox, or are you guys planning on fixing it?

Peter has been active on the C# and other MS newsgroups, has had samples at gotdotnet.com (now codegallery.com) that have been downloaded over 56,000 times, and has written numerous articles for eggheadcafe.com, for which he is a co-founder, and MSDNAA sites. He has also been a technical reviewer on books from Prentice Hall, Manning and other publishers. Peter was a Microsoft MVP for 10 years. Peter was born and raised in New York City, and after a stint as a jazz musician playing contrabass with the Robert Hunt Trio, migrated to sunny Florida, where he was hired as a rookie Financial Consultant at Merrill Lynch in Orlando, specializing in Corporate Services. It was at Merrill that Peter realized computers and technology were his forte. He spent his last few years at Merrill developing real – time computerized trading and and stock charting program using advanced technical analysis indicators, some of which are his own inventions. In 1997, he moved on to architect and serve as lead developer on a number of innovative web-based and middleware solutions for the healthcare and financial services industry.

Comments

  1. Anonymous1:16 PM

    Could you notify Mr. Opera of this so that he can finally get a night's sleep?! This is definitely good news.

    By the way, I have no problems playing embedded videos in IE, but I am still running XP.

    ReplyDelete
  2. peterbromberg2:58 PM

    Josh,
    XP vs Vista is a whole nother controversy. Not gonna go there...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Rick Strahl5:33 PM

    Peter, I think your talking about the the 'click to activate' thing in IE right? I think that's about to get fixed when Microsoft settled their suit with the company that claimed a patent on that. The fix is supposed to show up in the next round of IE updates.

    ReplyDelete
  4. peterbromberg6:44 PM

    No, not the Eolas fix - just that on some pages with embedded videos, IE craps out completely and you're sunk. There are probably a hundred fixes for this, all different, and most of them don't seem to work permanently. Firefox never seems to have a problem on these same pages.

    ReplyDelete

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