IE8 compatibility mode != IE7?
With the release of IE8 seemingly imminent, and with many developers still not testing their sites with IE8, the IE team have just posted details of how IE8’s compatibility mode is not necessarily identical to IE7
We strive to make Compatibility View behave as much like IE7 as possible, but we do make exceptions. Many of these exceptions enable improved security and accessibility features immediately, even for sites that have not yet migrated to IE8 Standards Mode.
Read the details at the IE team blog.
4 responses to “IE8 compatibility mode != IE7?”:
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It’s like a riddle, I know. Takes a little while to wrap your head around the whole IE7 Compat Mode vs IE8 Standards thing.
The intent (I think) on the part of the IE team was to not deny certain features just because a site was designed to render with IE7 in mind. (Plus, let’s face it, they might have run into some extremely tough trade-offs. IE8 is three browsers in one: IE8 Quirks, IE8 in IE7 Compat, and IE8 Standards. I’m amazed the damned thing works as well as it does.)
The consequence is that, yes, IE8 in IE7 Compat mode will break a few things that currently work in IE7.
But it’s just a few things, not a huge list.
And there’s precedent — a lot of things available in IE7 Standards are not available in Quirks Mode, nor should they be.
What a hideous arse-up. 3 browsers in one, none of which do the job. Someone please put this software out of it’s misery, the internets deserve better.
I dont really understand whats with the people at Microsoft…such a stupid way of forcing users as well as developers to upgrade their browser or operating system and what not.. sounds like they dont even have a “sense of direction”
Furthermore it’s important to note that IE8 compatibility mode has absolutely nothing to do with making third party sites render as some sort of backwards compatible browser version.
(For example, you can’t click ‘compatibility mode’ and have IE8 render http://www.google.com as mimicking IE7).
“Compatibility mode” is only enabled when the said third party web site actually updates their site to have the meta tags to make it compatible. If you’re having an issue with a page loading in IE8, and you’re not the webmaster, you’re kind of SOL as far as I can tell.