Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility, and IE8

by Aaron Gustafson

253 Reader Comments

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  1. Personally, I have to rewrite my sites at least every 3 to 4 years, often parts of some sites and some pages weekly (I want this new logo, I don’t like that color any more:-) ) As long as it is paid for I have no complaint.
    SO, I don’t understand the argument about future/backward compatible pages. I want customers to update their material, and since I use includes I just change one file; update – reload and the site is all done! and I can go back to shoveling snow. 
    I would like for browsers to be standards compliant, I though that was the whole point of having standards in the first place. I think you guys (those who see this as a way out) have just been beat down by the Standards Compliant” struggle and the “meta-code” snippet is an easy way out. The last time I looked (last week?) the IEs were down at 37% and dropping and FF was at at 45% and rising. I look forward to Standards Compliance growing and the continued growth of standards compliant browsers.

    v

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  2. This is indeed a nice approach if your application is huge and you want to make it compatible with new version of IE i.e. IE8.
    I am using this with my web application, but I am facing some problem. When I try to open a lightbox that time the window of lightbox is not getting compatible with IE8.I guess the issue is with javascript.So I am not getting how should I make my layout(which is build with javascript at runtime) compatible with IE8. what could be the solution??

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  3. I agree this solution (implementation aside) may help solve catastrophe when a new browser is released. However we only need to look at the outcome of other applications where we force specifics in a browser to see where this path will take us. These days I’m pretty sure I only see IE6 running within companies that spent a small fortune on custom software that requires they stay in the IE6 box to function.

    Do we really want to encourage the same type of behavior within basic web development? I work with enough “old school” clients to know that the vast majority would prefer to upgrade their old outdated site in the “HTTP-EQUIV” it was originally written in than redo everything with a new more modern solution. The last thing we want to do is promote locking our clients to a specific(and dated) browser, even if it does prevent a small period of panic.

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