Microsoft's latest idea (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/01/internet_explorer_standards/) for tackling Internet Explorer's lack of web standards compliance in the up-coming IE 8 has attracted a barrage of criticism.

Chris Wilson, Microsoft's IE platform architect, and chief IE bullet taker, has explained (http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/01/21/compatibility-and-ie8.aspx) how Microsoft intends to overcome standards and backwards compatibility problems by using a version switch.

Rather than change the IE architecture, Microsoft is putting the onus on developers to include a meta element on every web page to identify the appropriate rendering engine. Simple, huh?

So simple, the Web Standards Project supports (http://www.alistapart.com/articles/beyonddoctype/) the idea and has gone as far as to suggest this should be extended to other browsers.

That's an idea, though, that's been rejected by both Safari (http://webkit.org/blog/155/versioning-compatibility-and-standards/) and Mozilla (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/doron/archives/2008/01/whats_up_doctype.html), for various reasons, chiefly: they already enjoy a high-degree of compliance with web standards.

Opera (http://operawatch.com/news/2008/01/opera-mozilla-and-safari-react-to-ies-solution-for-browser-compatibility-issues.html) dryly welcomed Microsoft's belated recognition of standards. However, Opera's Anne van Kesteren joined (http://annevankesteren.nl/2008/01/ie-lock-in) Google HTML 5 (http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2008/01/22/html_five_preview/) spec author Ian Hixie in criticizing (http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1201080691&count=1) Microsoft's move for making web development even more complicated that it already is.

Developers in the broader community have also reacted (http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/22/1837244&from=rss%29) negatively to what they see as Microsoft side-stepping its responsibility to comply with web standards.

Doubts, meanwhile, have been raised about IE 8's ability to pass (http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2007/12/24/ie8_acid2_standards/) the Acid 2 rendering test - an indication of a browser's standards compliance. Håkon Wiem Lie, chief technology officer at Opera, said (http://www.news.com/Acid2,-Acid3,-and-the-power-of-default/2010-1013_3-6227171.html) he belives Microsoft could find a way to get around genuine Acid 2 support in the final IE 8 release.®

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