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internet-explorerinternet-explorer-8coding-style
Gordon Gustafson
Gordon Gustafson

Reputation: 41209

Will Internet Explorer 8 solve many of the browser incompatibility issues?

IE 6 and 7 didn't follow many of the w3 standards, like event handling, making it necessary to write code for the standards compliant browsers, and then write MORE code for Internet Explorer. Will IE 8 take us out of this dark age and stabilize web-development? Will it be easier to write one set of code that all browsers will display the same (ish) way?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 565

Answers (7)

AnthonyWJones
AnthonyWJones

Reputation: 189439

Certainly Internet Explorer 8 takes a significant step closer to standards compliance. I doubt, however, that it on its own can stabilize web-development. HTML and related "standards" are part of an inherently unstable process.

On the one hand we have browsers vendors wanting to differentiate their product from the others and on the other hand we have standards committees that take ages to establish standards so that they are already behind current feature demands by the time any such standards are ratified.

Upvotes: 1

John D. Cook
John D. Cook

Reputation: 30089

IE8 will improve the situation to the extent that it takes market share away from IE6. IE7 is not that bad.

There are some folks that don't mind being one version behind but also don't want to be two versions behind. Maybe some of these folks will move to IE7 or leapfrog over it to IE8.

Upvotes: 0

sth
sth

Reputation: 229563

New browsers don't solve compatibility problems, they make them worse. There is now a new browser that in some cases does things differently than other browsers. To solve compatibility issues old browser versions need to die out, so that they don't need to be supported anymore. But that takes a long, long time.

Upvotes: 2

em70
em70

Reputation: 6081

While IE8 is a major step forward in terms of CSS2 and CSS2.1 compatibility, mind that it's still failing miserably the ACID3 test so if on one side it'll be way better than its predecessors (especially IE6) it'll still plague us (way too) much...

Upvotes: 0

scunliffe
scunliffe

Reputation: 63580

IE8 fixes a lot of things - but it is still not up to par.

However with the popularity of libraries like jQuery etc. many of the IE bugs can be worked around.

Upvotes: 2

DOK
DOK

Reputation: 32831

As long as browsers are competing over superior features and functionality, there are going to be differences among them. And there's always the issue of different versions -- older versions of browsers, older versions of HTML (version 5 is on the way).

One approach to your dilemma is to use a web development tool that handles this for you. For example, Microsoft's ASP.Net handles browser compatibility automatically for you, so you don't have to write any code for it, including for Ajax functionality.

Upvotes: 0

Rex M
Rex M

Reputation: 144112

Every new release of IE gets us a little closer, but it's more about abandonment of old browsers than releasing of new ones. IE35 might be available, but if IE6 still has a 20% market share, we haven't actually progressed. Campaigns like this one which help educate and upgrade, are what will ultimately solve the problem.

Upvotes: 3

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