Has Microsoft finally came to the cold, harsh realization that their browser is in fact terrible? I certainly hope so, and the announcement of Internet Explorer 8 was more then thrilling. When I first found out about IE8 and Microsoft’s decision to finally throw us designers and developers a bone, I was overwhelmed.

Internet Explorer and standards complaint where two terms I thought I would never hear my self utter in the same sentence. But it is in fact true. This new Internet Explorer now complies with CSS 2.1 and has fixed a lot of the HTML inconsistencies present in older versions of IE.

Cascading style sheets 2.1 compliance
The Internet Explorer 8 layout engine is built to be cascading style sheets 2.1 compliant, enabling web developers and designers to write their pages once and have them render properly across all cascading style sheets 2.1 compatible browsers. However, Microsoft is not finished—hence, Microsoft is seeking feedback from developers working with Internet Explorer 8 Developer Beta 1.

HTML improvements
Many cross-browser inconsistencies have been fixed in Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1, including:

* Separate URL handing for attributes
* The get/set/remove attribute implementations are now compatible with those of other browsers
* Default attributes for HTML are supported so that they always exist on elements whether specified in the markup or not

One key thing to note is that Microsoft, for some strange reasons I have yet to understand fully, has decided with this release of IE8, users will be able to choose from 3 different layout engines. The IE 8 “Standards” mode, “Strict” mode, which essentially replicates the behavior of IE7, and lastly “Quirks” mode, which is pretty much an emulation of IE6 and below.

But ask yourself this, if Microsoft is finally developing their browser to comply with long since established internet standards, why on earth would they give you the option to pretty much continue to use the old, buggy IE7? If Microsoft gives to users the ability to stick with the old IE7, then are they really solving anything? There is still going to be a need for developers to design their websites with those, I will be frank, morons, who choose to stick with the IE7 layout engine. I for one do not see any rhyme nor reason to that decision. Hopefully, Microsoft will eventually force upon the world, a browser that is finally one day, truly complaint to standards and actually works. Until then, viva la Firefox!

Choice of layout engine
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 will ship in standards mode by default. However, three different rendering modes that may be set using the X-UA-Compatible header:

* Quirks mode which supports Internet Explorer 5 and legacy browsers
* Strict mode which supports Internet Explorer 7 and is accessed through the emulate Internet Explorer 7 button
* Internet Explorer 8 standards mode