Internet Explorer 8

I’m not a fan of Microsoft - that much should be clear by now.

I will complain about a compatibility mode that is triggered by a page being on an Intranet and thus render a page differently in a development environment to a live environment (unless the developer knows to look out for it).

I will be dubious about the standards mode blacklist, at least until I see it in practice.

However, I’m not going to join those who complain about IE8 failing to meet ACID3.

When IE6 came out, it was the best browser on the market. It blew the socks off the competition and dominated the market.

Microsoft rested on its laurels.

Time passes and rivals to IE6 crop up, eventually spurring Microsoft into action. Along comes IE7 - a massive improvement over IE6, but still lagging far behind the competition.

Along comes IE8 and it is, once more, fantastically better then IE7 at rendering pages.

It has a lot of dubious features, fluff, and an extremely dubious “compatibility mode”, but the ability to deal with standards conformant content is much better.

Since version 6, Internet Explorer has come a very long way on the web standards path. There is still a long way to go, but I’m not going to condemn it for lagging behind the competition when it is surely moving forwards.