Blame it on Microsoft

People like to blame it on Microsoft and it’s browsers. Everywhere on the internet you can read these kind of comments about the new IE8 browser. And honestly there are also a lot of things with the name Microsoft which do suck. (Vista, Internet Explorer 6).

But am I the only one, who praises Microsoft with IE8 and the “force-meta-tag“?
I mean, when you choose to build a website without following standards, and build it for IE6, then the mess on the end should be your own responsibility.
If you would have build the website according standards, you would probably not suffer of Internet Explorer 8.

IE8 it ain’t that bad

Look, I also think just switching the meta tags and forcing the user to load in a different mode is not making your page better.
Ofcourse you should fix the page with quality code instead of forcing the user.
But blaming the big M, is bit too much don’t you think?

There are a lot of (big) firm’s, who have a website or tool online, ofcourse with crap IE6-only code.
Every now and then these multinationals/firms bring out new .x versions of their website site/tool, with for example bugfixes for Firefox, Chrome.
These sites/tools are so big and complicated, there is no time and no money for a re-design, till a total new teamproject will get a start.

Thank you Microsoft, with an easy bug fix of the force-meta-tag these website’s can be fixed very fast. Using IE8 is no longer blocking or losing money. And with these big, complicated sites/tools we’re talking about millions of dollars not about some OSCommerce webshop.

Why so sad? See it as an extra feature. A Microsoft present.
Cause at the end, what did we learn? The next total fresh release of the big firm site/tool will be build according standards. (Or atleast it’s on their list of requirements.)