Usually you should never mention “Internet Explorer” and “W3C compliant” in one sentence, I know. But don’t just stop reading yet. After an astonishing time of more than a decade and seven versions of Microsoft’s (probably not much longer) leading browser, it finally becomes more close to be compliant to the W3C standards with IE.next, otherwise known as Internet Explorer 8.
In the IE Blog of MSDN, they have announced that a test version of the browser’s next installment passes the ACID2 test. This test is designed to find flaws in a browser rendering engine, but at the same time is designed to see if the rendering engine is compliant with the web’s standards. Apparently IE8 passes the test in “Standards Mode”.
Dean Hachamovitch, the General Manager of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer division, has called this a milestone, and is describing the procedure, and what exactly the browser does, in this post on IEBlogs. On the bottom a so-called Check-In is listed, outlining the updated source code files in Internet Explorer which now avail of code to pass the ACID2 test.
It is quite interesting to hear these developments. However, no exact release date has been given, or if the browser is available for XP users, or other features. We can only be left puzzling with what they mean with “Standards Mode”. Maybe the browser will have two modes, such as “IE Mode”, and “Standards Mode”. The latter is probably not enabled by default, and it won’t be available for XP. A pity. Because a lot of people like XP more.
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