When Microsoft do anything, we obvious stand ready to throw abuse at them because that’s what we do, thats what everyone does, and this time people have carried on the tradition as usual.
However, lets look at what they’ve done now. Internet explorer 8 is the new up and coming browser and it’s got something a little different about it, but first lets look at the problem.
As a web designer we all dread when new browsers enter the market, especially a new version of Internet Explorer or Firefox (as they are the market leaders). We worry how the websites we have made will react to the changes, will they display properly, what tags have they dropped support for? How do they render the pages? Basically a new browser release like Internet Explorer 8, can break the web. So the problem with Microsoft faced was every browser to come in the next few years, and the compatibility of websites to them.
The solution they came up with I believe is a clever one, it doesn’t burden anyone at all with anything too hard, simply a one line of code which will tell the browser how to behave, browser targeting. It’s a meta tag which you can tell for example, Internet Explorer 8 to act like Internet Explorer 7, but also all future versions of Internet Explorer will be able to do the same, even if its for example Internet Explorer 15 or something like that. Hence the name of ‘Browser Targeting’.
Of course this plan has come under some fire – Hey its Microsoft, most of us just cant help ourselves. The arguments against this plan is that firstly it is a botched attempt to solve a problem they have created, and that it’s bad we have to tell the browser how to act, which in a lot of ways are understandable, but we do in-fact live in the real world, not everything is possible.
My thoughts are this is a reasonable compromise, that website designers should be happy as now there will be no longer any unexpected results with future versions of a browsers. However my concerns are that websites designers / developers could become lazy, they could just target Internet explorer 7 only, and not unlock all the new features that new browsers will support, however this yet to be seen.
Well done Microsoft, you bunch of money hungry corporate scum.
Wuup Team
