Joel Spolsky has an entertaining and thought provoking read on why IE8 renders Google maps and live maps so poorly. Actually it is much more than that and Joel does a great job of explaining the battle between having IE8 default to the new "standard" rendering model, or to the old IE7 one. He concludes:
You see? No right answer. As usual, the idealists are 100% right in principle and, as usual, the pragmatists are right in practice. The flames will continue for years. This debate precisely splits the world in two. If you have a way to buy stock in Internet flame wars, now would be a good time to do that.
IE8 has a tough job ahead, that's for sure, and a lot depends on web developers recognising the changes that it will bring. As Joel points out, a major problem is how different browsers interpret the CSS standards. CSS 2.1 is very complex and not always clear, and it is no surprise that we have browsers that interpret it differently.
Perhaps the most significant part of IE8 release then is the development by Microsoft of CSS 2.1 Test Pages which they have submitted to the W3C for inclusion into the W3C’s CSS Working Group Test Suite. This is good news for all if adopted, because a test suite is exactly what we need and the current one by the W3C's working group is by their own admission "woefully incomplete and contains many incorrect tests". Having a full and complete test suite for CSS 2.1 brings pragmatism to the principles, and if adopted by all browser venders, means those shares in the flame wars will have been money down the drain.
Cheers
Ian
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