Getting excited about Internet Explorer
So although it seems like only a couple of months ago that Microsoft released IE7, it seems that IE8 has been slated to hit the tubes sometime around April ‘08. Now normally that wouldn’t get me going, but the rumors are, that it could be pretty good at fulfilling web standards. Now that really excites me! No more writing confusing CSS hacks, write for one browser, works for all, etc…
Don’t get me wrong, this is great news, but it’ll still take a couple of years before the websites we design don’t need to be compatible with IE6/7, but hey - at least it’s something to look forward to!
The one thing in the linked article that does concern me comes from here:
We must deliver improved standards support and backwards compatibility so that IE8 (1) continues to work with the billions of pages on the web today that already work in IE6 and IE7 and (2) makes the development of the next billion pages, in an interoperable way, much easier. We’ll blog more, and learn more, about this during the IE8 beta cycle.
So basically, they admit that they broke the web. But this raises a bigger question: ‘Can they really build a new browser that supports both websites hacked for IE6/7 and web standards…?’