IE8 gets all strict and dons a Gimp mask

Just had a ping from a chum in USaia who got a wee look at an email from the Microqusihy gnomes from Redmond and what do you know, in IE8 they are going to stick to standards...they promise.. honest..cross heart and hope to pass final Quality control at the pearly gates! (and i don't mean Bill)

However my chum wryly points out that to make the previous versions of IE standards compliant will probably mean that sites with code "tweaked" for IE6/7 may not now work! This has been addressed, so he is told, by a new bit of meta code that you insert into your old pages that will allow old code to work even in new shiny wonderfully compliant IE8.

So we will soon have ....

• "cant be arsed to put any meta-tags as i do all my development in notepad" mode
• "Standard" mode
  
• "Transitional" mode
• "Strict" mode
• "Madam MS's dungeon of pain and correction" mode

Oh how we laughed when IE6 Standard-mode worked and IE7 Standard-mode didn't. I imagine similar guffaws and hilarity will ensue when customers start giggling that there new Vista-ed IE8 PC cant get onto the Extranet.

See here and here for a yesterday and today's reactions bit of a rib-tickling MS fun,
and here for the meta-tag changes we may have to make.

One of the best lines in a long time from Dean Hachamovitch General Manager of IE
"We think that acting in accordance with principles is important"
and as we all know that is engraved in stone upon the walls of MS-central , but there is a word missing ... i am sure there was a "not" in there somewhere.

As much as I would welcome a new enlightened open standards compliant MS I am reminded of a localism that applies to MS in this context "Same old whore different dress".

I am moist with anticipation.

Slaun
Steve