IE8 Blacklist: Forcing Standards Rendering Opt-In

Mike Davies has some bad news:

A year ago Microsoft announced (through A List Apart) that standards compliant websites would be forced to opt into a standards rendering mode in IE8. The uproar from the web standards community was loud and clear: the default should always be render in standards compliancy mode. Microsoft backed down.

So it is with considerably surprise and anger to read that Microsoft have quietly gone back to their original position. The gist of it is if you want to be sure your site renders in standards compliant mode in IE, you have to explicitly opt into it. Otherwise you risk being blacklisted and thrown into IE7 Compatibility mode.

Here’s the upshot:

So not only do we have to test a new browser with IE8… it is looking very likely… we will have to test IE7 and IE7 Compatibility Mode separately.

Sometimes, I can’t help but wonder how Internet Explorer developers can look at themselves in the mirror knowing that they’re putting the rest of us through so much crap. Maybe it’s just the Microsoft way…