Dustin Wilson

Sorry, but news this good deserves a title like this. All of us web standardistas can breathe a sigh of relief. Looks like mommy came by and changed the diaper. For more information read my "IE Takes a Shit" article on the matter. Microsoft has chosen to make Internet Explorer 8 default to its own renderer instead of Internet Explorer 7's renderer, forcing anyone who wants to use IE 8's renderer to place in a meta directive. The problem with that is that not everyone keeps up with standards news. Microsoft doesn't have a very good record of getting the word out on proprietary items in its browser, usually having them buried in cruft on the MSDN website.

While keeping the meta directive will force Microsoft to exponentially bloat Internet Explorer with every release, but choosing to default to IE 8's renderer instead of IE 7's would make things better because the web wouldn't be stuck with a previous generation's renderer as the default. I don't much care about IE's bloat. The more they bloat it and slow it down the more likely people are going to attempt to try other browsers or operating systems (because IE is part of the OS itself).

This is better than excellent news. This made my day.