Internet Explorer 8 is SCAREY!!

**mersh** · 12-05-2008, 04:36 PM

Has anyone tried the IE8 beta yet? I've been using it.... one thing that concerns me a LOT is that many web sites, especially my Vshare sites, look like crap - everything is not where it should be. Then there's this little button next to the address bar, that you click to view the site in what MS calls "compatibility mode". Once you click it, you get a message saying "____.com is now being viewed in compatibility mode." and then the site looks like it should. The implication is, of course, that the site isn't quite up to snuff, so must be viewed in a special mode.

Sure, the SITE needs to be made compatible.... to the BROWSER. How about just not producing a browser that makes sites look like crap? This can be really really bad news for all web designers.

You'd think with all the crap going on in the world we could call a moratorium on these types of technological "advances" until everyone's had enough to eat....

**bplex** · 12-05-2008, 04:46 PM

This is a common problem with Microsoft. The reason why things look bad in IE8 is because IE8 is not compliant with most web standards. The same thing was true when IE4 first came out (which is why Netscape took over the browser market during that time). Microsoft is in the business of creating standards, not following them. Thus, this is what happens. All compatibility mode does is it turns off the ACID functions which causes everything to return to normal. The reason, however, why vShare sites usually take the worst hit is because vShare is not using compliant web code either. If you run a vShare website through a web validator, you get all kinds of errors. However, the only way to fix them in vShare is to have a decrypted version as many of the HTML renderings take place inside of encrypted files.