The Default Layout Mode

re: The Default Layout Mode

Dustin Brewer — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:01:08 GMT

I don't think introducing measures to make broken and non-standards compliant websites is the right direction.

IE8 should be standards compliant and force developers that aren't developing standards compliant websites to fix their own messes.

We have all waited 7 years for Microsoft to develop a standards compliant browser to ease up the stress on developers everywhere. I think it is about time (also, discontinue support of IE6 so I can tell my clients that MS doesn't support it, thanks!).

re: The Default Layout Mode

RD — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:27:06 GMT

Is there a way to see what mode IE8 is currently rendering with? If, I understand your post, if a doctype is not declared IE8 will use IE7 rendering? What if the page is declared as "Almost Standards" with a doctype of:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

re: The Default Layout Mode

EricLaw [MSFT] — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:45:03 GMT

@RD: Check out the "ShowDocMode" Bookmarklet here: http://www.enhanceie.com/ie/ie8.asp

re: The Default Layout Mode

Tony Chor [MSFT] — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:45:35 GMT

RD: Transitional doc types will render in the IE8 stds engine.

A super easy way to see what mode IE is rendering at is to set up a favelet with javascript:alert(document.documentMode). When you click it, you'll get a 5, 7, or 8 back. 5==quirks, 7==IE7 stds mode, and 8==IE8 stds mode. I use it all the time!

re: The Default Layout Mode

wisemx — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:57:10 GMT

"closer to that utopia". . .

You know it bro! Ooh Rah!

IE8 - The Default Layout Mode

DotNetKicks.com — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:58:31 GMT

You've been kicked (a good thing) - Trackback from DotNetKicks.com

re: The Default Layout Mode

Ron — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 05:57:49 GMT

@Eric: what's with the HTML tag coming before the Doctype on enhanceie.com?

Thanks for the favouritelet.

re: The Default Layout Mode

EricLaw [MSFT] — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 06:23:12 GMT

@Ron: Just checking to see who's paying attention.

re: The Default Layout Mode

FarStrider — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 06:26:44 GMT

about the IE VPC Images it says theres a:

IE6 XP

IE7 XP

IE8 ?

IE7 vis1.exe

IE7 vis2.rar

IE7 vis3.rar

whats the ie8 one on & what are the vis 1-3 images & why are 2 of them in rar compressed?

re: The Default Layout Mode

rd — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 06:50:01 GMT

Thanks for the answers! I'll give that a try.

re: The Default Layout Mode

Gyrobo — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 07:06:35 GMT

I don't know exactly where to direct my complaints, as this blog has been mysteriously inundated by posts, so I'll just say it:

I have a problem with the way IE8 handles data URIs.

The fact that you cannot use data URIs to create Javascript-laden web pages on the fly limits their usefulness, and the 32 kilobyte limit is completely arbitrary. No other browser vendor has data URIs implemented this way.

Could someone explain to me how the 32 kilobyte limit was decided upon, and why data URIs couldn't be run in the same zone as Javascript URIs?

re: The Default Layout Mode

Mark Byers — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 08:37:46 GMT

When opening a new Window in IE8 from an existing Window, the session is lost! Which makes it unusable for any web application. I can not find anywhere to configure this. Help!

re: The Default Layout Mode

Jon Tan — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 13:33:11 GMT

Scott, I think this is exactly the right approach to support the arguments of developers fighting for standards compliance in legacy applications.

<a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/03/06/the-default-layout-mode.aspx#8082825">Dustin</a>, when you have a commitment, like the IE team does, to ten years of backwards compatibility your answers have to be more erudite than "force developers that aren't developing standards compliant websites to fix their own messes". Replace "force" with "encourage" and it seems to me that's exactly what the IE team are doing, without being so aggressive. Everyone wants a standards compliant world and I've seen more progress towards that in the last 18 months than in the previous 7 years. A radical idea might be to offer positive alternative solutions rather than ranting, if you have any.

Les diff�rents modes d'affichage disponibles sous Internet Explorer 8

Victor BRITO - Webmaster — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:03:12 GMT

Le blog de MSDN, dans un billet intitul� "The Default Layout Mode", r�sume les diff�rents modes d'affichage disponibles sous la version 8 d'Internet Explorer.

re: The Default Layout Mode

Rowan — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 14:34:40 GMT

EditPlus is a Windows text editor that I use for web development, it has a simple preview mode that uses IE to render a web page within the EditPlus window.

However even with IE8 installed EditPlus seems to use IE7's rendering engine, is this a bug with IE or EditPlus? Do other programs, such as Firefox's "IE Tab" behave the same way?

Imagine the confusion this could cause some people!

CSS bug: Images unexpectedly lose size constraint

Rowan — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:01:45 GMT

Since I can't post on the connect site (and the discussion group is lame) I'm posting this bug report here.

I've created a test case that explains this bug fully, please click the following link to view the report.

Images unexpectedly lose size constraint

http://rowanw.com/bugs/ie8b1-image-size.htm

re: The Default Layout Mode

ccatto — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:26:21 GMT

Hey Now Scott,

Long live the <META> tag! Everyone should be experiencing web slices in IE8

Thx 4 the info,

Catto

conditional comments

Brian LePore — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:57:53 GMT

How do the differing rendering modes affect conditional comments? Does a page set to use the IE7 standards mode evaluate comments marked for IE7, or do they get rules for IE8?

I know it'd be asking for a lot, but if you could modify the rendering mode without a restart and add in the IE6 standards mode it'd be great. I'd love to be able to test IE6 without a VM.

re: The Default Layout Mode

Aaron — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 17:02:47 GMT

Just want to say thanks to the IE team again. I'm quite excited about the progress made. Now if we can just get the event model updated...

IE8 B1 -Hard to report bugs

Ashley L. Simpson — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 18:13:45 GMT

Hi, Scott Dickens,

re: IE8 - Beta1

I'm an IT Pro - not a Developer.

1. It's hard to report bugs. No Link on the

IE8 - Beta1 Welcome page.

2. Installing over Vista Business Desktop, distorted all the widgets on the right panel, : Clock, Stocks, Currency ..

3. www.JetBlue.com - lower left, bottom of a table got scrunched together. IE7 Revert Button, fixed this.

Thanks, Ashley@InforSystems.com

re: The Default Layout Mode

Mike Dimmick — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 18:20:21 GMT

Dustin, you're missing the problem with HTML pages being written to read-only media such as CD-ROMs, as release notes or as static help pages, including HTML Help. Even writeable help pages as part of a larger installation of software are affected until the supplier can issue a patch. This is the web-without-the-web, and the deployment story is not as simple as 'fix your broken pages one time on your web server'. IE, and IE's rendering engine in the form of the Web Browser control, have to cope with these pages as well as the classic HTML-over-HTTP(S) scenario.

That's why I preferred the original solution, of stating which version you had actually tested with. Given the new, IE8-default mode, it might make more sense to deploy quirks-mode pages in these scenarios, if that will be more stable.

I'm not sure I agree with HTML documentation for software, but that's the route we've gone down and we have to make it work.

HTML 5

Mephiles — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 18:49:27 GMT

What HTML5 tags and attributes do you support? I'd like to use them on my website ^_^

re: The Default Layout Mode

Stifu — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 18:51:54 GMT

@Mike Dimmick:

By putting invalid HTML pages on a CD-ROM, you're asking for troubles. Those who did so should face that. Browsers evolve, data on read-only mediums doesn't. Besides, properly-written HTML pages put on CD-ROMs will still work. If you do things the nasty way, you end up paying the price for it sooner or later. It's only fair.

Browser vendors should focus on the web, and pages copied on read-only mediums are a tiny minority that isn't part of the web. I really don't think the whole web should be held back just because of something that meaningless.

re: The Default Layout Mode

Yuri Carvalho — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 18:57:25 GMT

Well, site's with java don't work example... Live Maps.. or the sucks.. Google Maps... site open all bugged. and blogger too.. dont open correct... but using the IE7 Emulate.. all works

re: The Default Layout Mode

Han — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 21:22:10 GMT

@Mike Dimmick,

The good news is that if you put web content on a CD (readonly material), chances are that the end user if they look at it years from now, will be using Firefox, Opera or another advanced browser that will render the content fine.

If you coded it against standards, or in an IE-only proprietary HTML format, then you messed up, and now your end users suffer. The only way to code, is for standards, if you don't, you are asking for serious trouble.

re: The Default Layout Mode

Phil — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 22:25:38 GMT

@Stifu:

This is all fine and good, but it isn't the person that "did things the nasty way" that pays the price. It's the end-user stuck trying to read broken documentation.

IE image

Farstrider — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:38:11 GMT

about the IE VPC Images it says theres a:

IE6 XP

IE7 XP

IE8 ?

IE7 vis1.exe

IE7 vis2.rar

IE7 vis3.rar

whats the ie8 one on & what are the vis 1-3 images & why are 2 of them in rar compressed?

re: The Default Layout Mode

Jeremy — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 02:11:11 GMT

Puh-leeeze. Why do you make comments like this? We are the ones who have been writing those blogs for years Just say what you have to say without the holy preamble that might have been interesting five years ago.

"Clearly there is a lot of momentum behind pushing the web forward (as evidenced, in part, by the lively dialog on this and other blog sites around the web)."

re: The Default Layout Mode

Tino Zijdel — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 02:29:17 GMT

So basically a page without doctype but with some meta-tag can still trigger standards-mode in IE? Thats... odd

re: The Default Layout Mode

PatriotB — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 03:08:40 GMT

@Tino -- then don't put the meta tag in your quirks-mode page. No one's forcing you to.

@Stifu -- it's not just about people who wrote "invalid" HTML or CSS. What about the parts of HTML/CSS that are left undefined? If IEn implements these things one way, and then a future spec comes a long and defines these undefined things to be different than the way IEn implemented them, then IEn+1 could break these pages.

re: The Default Layout Mode

Stifu — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 11:15:54 GMT

@Phil: yes, but the end user won't be happy with the documentation made by company X, hence s/he'll blame the problem on them (or on the browser, but I think that's less likely).

@PatriotB: on the other hand, some badly-coded pages may still be fine. Dirty table-based pages also have high chances to render properly.

It'll only be broken if the pages use a doctype, and rely on IE CSS bugs (like related to float, margins and the likes). And even then, even if there are rendering problems, the whole documentation may still be quite usable, just not as pretty as it could be.

Taking that in consideration, the number of read-only pages that'll be totally screwed in IE8 will probably be very low...

re: The Default Layout Mode

Tino Zijdel — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 16:03:52 GMT

@PatriotB: I can think of situations where that is not completely in your own control (e.g. a server that emits X-UA-Compatible as an HTTP header by configuration). In such cases there is no way for an author to force quirksmode (or is that why MS decided to break normal header vs meta behaviour and let any meta X-UA-Compatible tag take precedence?).

Anyhow it is inconsistent behaviour compared to other browsers. Imo X-UA-Compatible should complement DTD based switching, not overrule it.

Internet Explorer 8

TheUndeadable entwickelt — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 02:40:44 GMT

Zum IE 8 werde ich jetzt nicht viel schreiben, aber eines ist sicher: Dadurch, dass der IE 8 im Standards-Mode (IE 7: Strict, IE 5: Quirks) wirklich absolut nach CSS 2.1 rendert und keinerlei Rückwärtskompatibilität zu bekannten Fehlnutz

A partial truth...

Demian — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 05:15:29 GMT

So, you're telling the rest of the standard compliant browsers, and the rest of the standards world that the document complies with the standard (by declaring a DOCTYPE), but ONLY your browser will know that the truth is the document doesn't really comply with the DOCTYPE it just declared, so ONLY your browser will render it correctly and the other browsers don't...

Brillant.

That's playing fair with the community. :-P

re: The Default Layout Mode

Tony Chor [MSFT] — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:28:51 GMT

Demian: We believe that most people who use the x-ua-compatible flag to override the doctype have IE-specific coding that other browsers wouldn't need. Also, there's certainly nothing stopping other browser vendors from respecting x-ua-compatible if they want. We're just tryng to provide web developers and designers with a little more control over how IE renders pages.

Rowan: When IE is hosted by an application, we default the mode to IE7; we'd break many applications like Help in Windows XP otherwise. Like the CDROM case discussed in the comments, it would be difficult for application developers with deployed products to update their code.

Nyheter för utvecklare i Internet Explorer 8

Robert Folkesson — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 02:02:17 GMT

I onsdags under MIX08-keynoten presenterades den första beta-versionen av Internet Explorer 8. Den innehåller

Nyheter för utvecklare i Internet Explorer 8

Noticias externas — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 02:18:25 GMT

I onsdags under MIX08-keynoten presenterades den första beta-versionen av Internet Explorer 8. Den innehåller

re: The Default Layout Mode

Tino Zijdel — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 13:00:36 GMT

One more time to demonstrate why x-ua-compatible should be complimentary to a standards triggering doctype and should not be leading:

Imagine a uneducated webdeveloper (shouldn't be hard) who is testing some pages in IE8. He sees several pages break down and decides to add x-ua-compatible=IE7 to all pages (or asks his serveradmin to emit such header). Lo and Behold! The pages that were broken suddenly work correctly in IE8, but other pages are now suddenly broken - the ones that were depending on quirksmode! Being uneducated this poor webdeveloper is now very confused and blames IE...

Mix08 3日目 (最終日) Developing Cutting Edge Web Applications with IE8

ウィンドウズ開発統括部 — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 21:39:26 GMT

Mix08 3日目 (最終日) Developing Cutting Edge Web Applications with IE8

Using The Emulate IE7 Button

IEBlog — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 04:04:16 GMT

For the Internet Explorer 8 Beta, we’ve added an Emulate IE7 button to the command bar. It will help

Mix08 3日目 (最終日) Developing Cutting Edge Web Applications with IE8

ウィンドウズ開発統括部 — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:30:30 GMT

Mix08 3日目 (最終日) Developing Cutting Edge Web Applications with IE8

re: The Default Layout Mode

Demian — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 17:37:51 GMT

@Tony Chor: Thanks for your reply. Funny, you always expect other to join you, while most of us are expecting you to join the rest of the community. What can I say...

WebBrowser Control Rendering Modes in IE8

IEBlog — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 21:59:59 GMT

Many commonly used applications and Windows system components depend on the MSIE WebBrowser control to

HTML and DOM Standards Compliance in IE8 Beta 1

IEBlog — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 22:28:42 GMT

With the release of IE8 Beta 1, I'm pleased to be able to talk about the first round of improved standards

What's Coming With Internet Explorer 8

Non-official Random .NET Ramblings — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 02:21:19 GMT

If you did not know Microsoft is currently working on Internet Explorer 8 (IE8), you may ask why a new

Microsoft breaks IE8 interoperability promise

Siljaline's Blog — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 18:08:57 GMT

Microsoft said the right things, then blew it. In March, Microsoft announced that their upcoming Internet

Rendre vos sites Web compatibles IE8 avec une simple balise Meta

ASP.NET Français Blogs — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 03:28:25 GMT

Hier après-midi, entre deux tâches de ma Todo List je vais rapidement checker les flux RSS de certains