Yes, I’ve got two things that will make you Web Developers feel good and then bad. All Web Developers knows how hard it is to make a multi browser compatible site. If there were no Internet Explorer, that would be a whole lot easier. A guy have posted a Chart of Web Design Timeline on his site. How true it is.

Anyway this is our fate and we have to fight with it every day. Ok lets see the good news.

GOOD NEWS: IE6 is being Phased Out by Microsoft on Feb. 12th, 2008

Yes thats true. On February 12, 2008 Microsoft will release the Windows Internet Explorer 7 Installation and Availability update to Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) marked as an Update Rollup package. Windows Internet Explorer 7 Installation and Availability Update is a complete installation package that will upgrade machines running Internet Explorer 6 to Windows Internet Explorer 7. See complete information here.

BAD NEWS: Microsoft to add a “super standards” mode to IE 8

IE Platform Architect Chris Wilson posted on the Internet Explorer team blog that they are going to make IE 8 real standard compatible. Here are few lines from the blog

1. “Quirks mode” remains the same, and compatible with current content.
2. “Standards mode” remains the same as IE7, and compatible with current content.
3. If you (the page developer) really want the best standards support IE8 can give, you can get it by inserting a simple <meta> element. Aaron gives more details on this in his article.

He further said:

We believe this approach has the best blend of allowing web developers to easily write code to interoperable web standards while not causing compatibility problems with current content. We also think this approach allows developers to opt in to standards behavior on their own schedule and as it makes sense to them, instead of forcing developers into a responsive mode when a new version of IE has different behavior on their current pages. I’m excited by all the standards work we’re doing in IE8; I’m even more excited that we won’t cause a lot of compatibility problems for our users and web developers.

But the question is, is it really going to help developers? Answer is no, simply no. Right now we are working hard to make webpages compatible for IE 6 and IE 7. With the IE 6 trashed and IE 8 released in the future, we will have three monsters to fight. Our clients will told us that they want their pages to be compatible with all three modes of IE 8. This is not really going to help us. Lets see whats going to happened next.

Least Microsoft can do for developers, is making super standards mode default for IE 8, but I am sure that they are not going to do so. They have a very bad habit of showing the features they have added in their applications to their users. So I am sure they will leave the choice to pick the mode upon end user, and then we know what is going to happen.