Like many I was pretty excited when Microsoft announced IE8 would be much improved in terms of compatibility, standards and accessibility; foolishly I allowed myself to dream that soon support for IE6 would be a thing of the past. They seemed to listen when developers voiced their concerns over the way it would handle “Quirks” and so the dream continued.
However, as I’m sure you know unless you’ve been hiding under a big rock, Microsoft released IE8 recently and well the response has been… meh! Jake Goldman has written a post 3 simple examples: why Internet Explorer 8 disappoints web developers that explains some of the reasons this release hasn’t impressed many. Paul Thurrott has responded, albeit with his Microsoft hat on, and attempted to justify the short comings. I am not convinced that appealing to the “real users with real concerns” argument is entirely valid here. Sure not everyone cares whether a browser passes the Acid3 test, most people wont even know what it is and quite frankly that we need to have it at all highlights the fundamental problem here.
What “real users” (and developers for that matter) want is all browsers to behave the same, to interpret mark-up the same way so there is some consistency. That should be the starting point for any new browser (or new version) only when the browser correctly deals with the fundamentals should the bells and whistles be considered e.g. web slices, extensions, tabs or whatever. Note: I am not singling out IE8 here, this point is valid for all browsers.
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