Web Standards  -  October 28, 2008

As web designers, we all seem to go on quite a bit about web standards and backwards compatibility. The way web design works at the moment,  standards are often seen as an optional extra. Most people know that they should be making standards compliant, validating code, but often they get pushed to the side until the very last moment. Although pages like this often work in browsers, its hardly a good way to design a page and it is definitely not a good idea.

I learned the other day that the developers of IE8 were planning on implementing a system where a web designer will have to put a new tag in their HTML in order make use of the latest CSS3 and XHTML tags. As if the current problems with Doctypes, quirks mode and browser rendering problems weren’t enough of an issue without IE8 implementing more proprietary code into HTML. So from now on, If you want your site to render in a new standards compliant mode in IE8 you will now need to add the following meta data:

<meta http-equiv=”X-UA-Compatible” content=”IE=8″ />

Site owners are understandably wanting to keep their web sites viewable to all browser types, but how long should designer keep using the same tired old CSS hacks, ignoring the new CSS2 and CSS3 specifications and implementing PNG hacks simply to satisfy the IE market?

As designers we all still feel that IE6 is used by enough users (still around 20-30%) to warrant the extra work needed to make it accessible for these users. But IE6’s days are hopefully numbered.

daviess at 5:30 pm

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