IE8 — Another IE6 in the Making?

Dietrich Kappe, Monday, February 2, 2009 @ 8:00 am

IE6 was a plague upon the Web landscape; we're still dealing with the hacky CSS, HTML and JavaScript that IE6 forced us to write. And there's a handful of dead-enders who just won't let IE6 die, die, die already. So the nearing release of IE8 should be good news, right? Everybody moves up a notch, even the poor sods whose corporate standard is IE6 (crazy, I know).

Not so fast. What made IE6 so bad is that it's bugs became standards. When your site doesn't work, you don't have time to wait while Microsoft maybe pushes a patch (which doesn't take with 50% of the installed base), so you hack the CSS, HTML and JavaScript to make it work. Before you know it, the bugs and other deviations from the standard have become the standard.

Now there are some worrisome signs around the release of IE8. Tables that don't render correctly, JavaScript calls that crash the browser. It's not just the bugs, it's the fact that the IE8 team seems to be giving these bugs the stiff-arm. If IE8 makes it out with a load of these fundamental bugs, they will become the f*cked up baked potato of a standard. And all of us web application developers will be back in 2003. I hated those IE6 days, and none of my clothes from that time fit anymore.

So, if you want to make sure that IE8 isn't a recap of the horrors of IE6, get yourself a copy of IE8 and start providing some feedback. Also, make sure to vote up those bugs that really need fixing. Even if you don't use IE in your day-to-day work, if you develop web software, this is a matter of sanity.

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Comments (7)

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Comments: 7 so far

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1. 

   I’ve been on the get-rid-of-IE5-and-IE6-and-every-other-browser-that’s-more-than-10-years-old-crusade for a while, and it just won’t stick for most people. They have it, it still works, they won’t switch.

   Let’s just pray that IE8 respects *some* standards, so we don’t end up creating an IE6, IE7 and IE8 specific website (and having Firefox/Opera/Safari/Chrome stuck somewhere in the middle). Even if IE8 manages to be a one-shot-wonder, there’s still the issue of getting IE6 users to upgrade.

   Comment by Mattias Geniar, Tuesday, February 3, 2009 @ 6:13 am

2. 

   I remain pessimistic of ANY version of IE until they prove me wrong, I think most devs tolerate IE rather than love it no matter which version. If IE8 turns out to be another thorn then it’s time it was pulled out so we can get on with using Web Browsers which adhere to web standards, I think the approach they should all take is to adhere to the web standards in place, possibly reusing the same libraries such as Chrome has done.
   With so many Browsers to make sure things work in its vital everyone works from the same page, as you said otherwise we will be going in reverse not forward

   Comment by Kev, Tuesday, February 3, 2009 @ 9:52 pm

3. 

   We’ve had an interesting time of it with IE8. Received a few emails “saying the application looks crap, fix it!” We’ve got a whole bunch of hacks in there for IE6, really don’t want to have to do the same thing for IE8.

   Comment by Pramatr, Friday, February 6, 2009 @ 2:17 am

4. [...] makes no sense for Microsoft to be creating another Internet Explorer, because it gets them no profit whatsoever. There are enough open source browsers that are better [...]

   Pingback by IE8: Why? ~ Mattias Geniar, Saturday, February 14, 2009 @ 6:49 am

5. [...] projects bumps up against its limitations. It’s too early for us to render a verdict, but the signs have not been good and continue to be [...]

   Pingback by Agile Ajax » IE8: That Sinking Feeling » Pathfinder Development, Tuesday, March 31, 2009 @ 1:43 pm

6. 

   I don’t know what you are talking about, back in 2003, it wasn’t IE 6 that was the problem. We were still having to code for Netscape 4 and IE 5 and 5.5

   Comment by Dan Shields, Tuesday, March 31, 2009 @ 2:48 pm

7. [...] get the page to render correctly in this most outdated of browsers. And, as Dietrich mentioned in a previous post, the problem is that these deviations from the standard end up becoming the standard and increase [...]

   Pingback by Custom Application Development » Death to IE6 » Pathfinder Development, Thursday, June 11, 2009 @ 6:44 am

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