
Some Web sites are designed for older browsers - sant0sk1
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956197
======
ambition
Joel Spolsky has an excellent write-up called "Martian Headsets" that explains
why MS is damned either way on standards issues.

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/03/17.html>

It should be mandatory reading for everyone who supports web standards.

~~~
mattmaroon
MS is in a lot of situations where they're screwed either way, but people tend
not to feel sorry for companies with market caps over the quarter trillion
mark.

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goodkarma
"Internet Explorer 8 includes a Compatibility View feature that displays Web
sites that were created for older browsers as they were designed to appear.
You can enable Compatibility View in Internet Explorer or on the Web server."

Thank goodness for that!

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intheory0
How about rather than asking web designers, server owners and IT staff
everywhere to add some hack tag to their code, you force IE8 into
compatibility mode _unless_ a designer specifically enables IE8 rendering on
their page by adding said tag? That mediates the issue pretty easily.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
IIRC, they were originally planning to do exactly what you said, requiring a
special tag to enable standards compliance in IE8, but there was a gigantic
backlash from the web development and standards community.

Why? Because then we get nowhere; all the clueless web designers never find
out about the special tag to make IE8 comply with internet standards, and
continue making webpages for the broken IE rendering model for the next 10
years.

We _need_ to make all those old websites break, because otherwise they'll
never comply with modern standards. We _need_ to have standardsbased rendering
be the default because then the designers that test against IE8 will be making
sites that work better with other browsers.

By forcing developers to realize that their websites are non-compliant (either
from angry users or specifically forcing quirks mode) and by defaulting to
standards-based rendering, we make the web design future a much nicer place to
be.

~~~
es
Well... I see there is still a "method to enable Compatibility View for
specific Web pages".

 _< meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=EmulateIE7" />_

