Internet Explorer 8 Could Break Web Pages, Microsoft Warns

Microsoft is warning Web masters that its new found love of standards could result in their carefully crafted pages not displaying correctly in the forthcoming Internet Explorer 8 browser, which is expected to be released to a public beta trial some time after the end of June.

In a blog post last week, Microsoft technical manager Nick MacKechnie said IE8, unlike its predecessors, would favor widely used Internet standards -- and not Microsoft protocols -- as its default settings. "Browsing with this default setting may cause content written for previous versions of Internet Explorer to display differently than intended," MacKechnie said.

With Explorer 8, Microsoft has promised default support for W3C Internet programming guidelines. Among other things, IE8 promises default compatibility with Web standards such as CCS 2.1 and HTML 5. It also promises improved support for the Ajax language.

MacKechnie said the approach is "consistent with our efforts to promote further interoperability across the Web."

But he cautioned that the changes mean that pages built for IE7 may not render properly in IE8. Microsoft is offering developers a downloadable meta-tag that they can add to their Web pages if they want IE8 to render their content using IE7's default settings.

MacKechnie's warning is consistent with a bulletin released earlier this year by researchers at Gartner, in which they warned developers about the changes in IE8. Gartner cautioned that IE 8's default standards mode "will result in pages that don't display correctly for some enterprise applications."

That's because many Web- or intranet-facing applications used in business were built to work with previous versions of Explorer. With IE8, "Microsoft is trying to woo the Web 2.0 world," Gartner said. The researchers said it's "an indicator of what some have called 'the new Microsoft.'"

Microsoft earlier this year pledged broad support for systems interoperability and open standards -- in part to appease European monopoly regulators who have levied more than $2 billion in antitrust fines on the software maker to date.

Gartner recommends that enterprise developers fall in line with Microsoft's commitment to standards when creating new Web applications. "Strive to design for standards, not browsers," Gartner said. "Don't depend on any one client-side technology. Focus instead on validated user interaction patterns," the researchers added.