IE8 to act like IE8… by default!
After much moaning on my part, and eventual acceptance of the idea, Microsoft turned around and announced that IE8 will default to IE8 mode after all. To this I can only say: stop toying with my emotions, Microsoft!
Seriously, though, this is great news. The old default didn’t make any sense from a design standpoint (though it made perfect sense from a business standpoint). While this change doesn’t ameliorate all my concerns with browser version targeting, it will at least stop IE7 from becoming a de-facto “web standard.” That was one of my largest concerns in the first place.
So if the original decision was a business decision, why the sudden change? I very much doubt it was all the complaints across the web. The announcement does give us a hint:
We think that acting in accordance with principles is important, and IE8’s default is a demonstration of the interoperability principles in action. While we do not believe any current legal requirements would dictate which rendering mode a browser must use, this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue. As stated above, we think it’s the better choice. [emphasis mine]
The whispers around the internets is that this change is to avoid anymore potential legal trouble with the EU. I can see this angle, and it would be fixed if IE were entirely separated from Windows itself. Since it’s unlikely Microsoft will ever release standalone versions of IE, they had to make this change to avoid the appearance of locking customers into IE7 mode HTML+CSS+Javascript. I don’t know if this line of thought was what caused the change of heart, but it seems like it would be a factor.
At any rate, IE8 will function like every other browser out there, thus minimizing browser specific hacks. And in the end, that’s a lot more important to me than the whys.