It’s good news that Internet Explorer 8 is coming and that it will pass the Acid test.

Im sure they will screw it up with something else.

Can I top up that half empty glass for you?

Why thank you Jonathan

its good news it will pass acid2.

That it is coming out at all I cannot agree with.

@Marphod: get real, IE exists, and around 8 out of 10 people use it in one shape or another. Anyone who has anything to do with the CSS aspects of web development, directly or indirectly, should be pleased that there is a real prospect of a better majority browser some time soon.

I'll believe it when I see it.

I don't see why I should consider it a 'good thing' and support the release of a lousy piece of software which is enforced use by a near-monopoly, that has historically violated standards (and in normal running still violates them), and actively tries to beat its competition, not by innovation or superiority in any measurable relevant field, but by FUD.

Fair enough.

I was torn as to whether or not this was a good thing overall, as IE's a crappy piece of software. But if people are gonna be dumb enough to use it, I suppose I can only agree that it's at least good that it's (supposedly) going to be standards-compliant.

IFF run in a non-standard mode.

That's a specious point. The page author gets to determine what mode is triggered through their doctype.

The ACID2 test is not a standards compliant source of enlightenment. Passing it is good, yes, but it is a feature request. There are many things it does that are to spec but outside of the real world, and it is such a narrow test, all things considered.

Devon, you're right (also correcting my earlier point about doctype).

I'm disagreeing on the basis of Opt In. As a hobby web designer/developer, I'm damn well pissed off that they want me to add junk code to my otherwise good document just to get IE to do what every other browser does with no extra effort. Having to include certain doctypes to get standards mode was annoying enough.

Adding a special 'please give me standards' tag just for IE (and lets be real, it is JUST for IE given no other browser vendors are supporting it) just feels wrong. It feels like the old days.

Microsoft have indeed made a pig's ear out of the web by giving the masses (who quite understandably neither know nor care about any of this) a deeply flawed browser in IE6 at precisely the time when the use of the internet was burgeoning. But from what I have read on the 'opt in' issue, I think Kevin Yank calls it about right.

It is good for the people that regularly update their anti-virus. However, those who tend to do this most likely have already to a different more secure browser such as Firefox. At least it appears that Microsoft is trying still.

I hate Internet Explorer's differences in HTML and CSS. It is so annoying... And then people wonder why Internet Explorer is losing it's field.

This claim is actually 2 in 1... I cannot vote on it, because I would answer each claim differently. Yes, it's good it passes the Acid2... but I wish more than anything that M$ would just pull out of the browser market.

I was happy when they did a 180 on the Opt In and made it required for the old rendering engine, but if MS really wants to fix the mistakes that happened in in IE6 and are still around in IE7 they'd remove, even the opt in for backward compatibility, let the web break and let it get fixed. BANG! Now everything is standards compliant.

I would have more respect for them for saying "Hey we're gotta break stuff because we made it bad the first time. It's our fault, we're sorry we compulsively try to create our own standards, we won't do it again." than I do for them trying to patch their bad product and support broken junk.

I find it hard to believe that so many people can disagree with this.
The IE team made mistakes in the past, but look at the other older browsers. Netscape and standards weren't used in the same sentence. The IE hatred is all based around a misconception: that IE6 should have as good standards as its counterparts like Firefox 1.5+, Safari, and Opera 9+. They're not its counterparts. IE6 was released in 2001. That's seven years ago. It's irritating that Microsoft took until last year to release IE7, but they had a lot of other things on their plate. It's not acceptable, but we all make mistakes.

This, on the other hand, is fantastic. Acid2 does resemble the majority of standards compliance, so it is a reliable marker of W3C compliance. And you can see it when you look at a page in Firefox/Safari/Opera and then compare with IE8 - it's the same. Sure, there are bugs, but there are bugs in Opera, Safari, and Firefox, too. They're minor things, and they will always exist in one form or another, unless all browsers start using the same rendering engine - which isn't going to, and shouldn't happen.

Huggz: The two parts of the claim are joined by the conjunction "and". If you disagree with either conjunct, you disagree with the claim and should vote accordingly.

D'A
... that's logic for you

its passing but ms screwed up ie - worst than ie7

this means more bugs..........i knew e-explorer was a bad idea......like Firefox better

But dont hold your breath, some people are still on ie6... and from looking at browser stats it takes a couple years for enough IE users to have made the transition (ie: at least 80%).

Time to tell Uncle Bert to install updates on his illegal copy of Windows.

Josh Atkins:

All I have to say is.

TRANSPARENT PNGs.
I hope to god they've fixed it, but come on. For f*cks sake.

(And if it works on IE7, I didn't know. I left IE a long time ago... and I've never looked back.)

IE7 does handle transparent PNGs fine.

Passes in standards mode? Is that it's default mode or something special, I wonder.