Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
Windows Internet Explorer 8 is a web browser developed by Microsoft in the Internet Explorer browser series. The browser was released on March 19, 2009 for Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, and Windows 7. Both 32-bit and 64-bit builds are available...
was promoted by Microsoft as having stricter adherence to W3C described web standards than Internet Explorer 7
Internet Explorer 7
Windows Internet Explorer 7 is a web browser released by Microsoft in October 2006. Internet Explorer 7 is part of a long line of versions of Internet Explorer and was the first major update to the browser in more than 5 years...
. As a result, as in every IE version before it, some percentage of web pages coded to the behavior of the older versions would break in IE8. This would have been a repetition of the situation with IE7 which, while having fixed bugs from IE6, broke pages that used the IE6-specific hacks to work around its non-compliance. This was especially a problem for offline HTML documents, which may not be updatable (e.g. stored on a read-only medium, such as a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM).
In computing, version targeting is a technique that allows a group of users utilise some advanced software features that were introduced in a particular software version while allowing users accustomed to the prior versions still utilise the same software as if the new features were never added...
whereby a page could be authored to a specific version of a browser using the X-UA-Compatible declaration either as a meta element
Meta element
Meta elements are the HTML or XHTML <meta … > element used to provide structured metadata about a Web page. Multiple elements are often used on the same page: the element is the same, but its attributes are different...
or in the HTTP headers.
In order to maintain backwards compatibility, sites can opt-into IE7-like handling of content by inserting a specially created meta element
Meta element
Meta elements are the HTML or XHTML <meta … > element used to provide structured metadata about a Web page. Multiple elements are often used on the same page: the element is the same, but its attributes are different...
into the web page that triggers the "Compatibility mode" in the browser, using:
A newer version of the browser than the page was coded for would emulate the behavior of the older version, so that the assumptions the page made about the browser's behavior holds true.
Microsoft proposed that a page with a doctype that triggers standards mode (or almost standards mode) in IE7 would, by default, trigger IE7-like behavior, called "standards mode" (now called "strict mode") in IE8 and future versions of IE. The new features of IE8 are enabled to trigger what Microsoft called the "IE8 standards mode" (now called "standards mode"). Doctypes that trigger quirks mode
Quirks mode
In computing, quirks mode refers to a technique used by some web browsers for the sake of maintaining backward compatibility with web pages designed for older browsers, instead of strictly complying with W3C and IETF standards in standards mode....
Ars Technica is a technology news and information website created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, science, technology policy, and video games. Ars Technica is known for its features, long articles that go...
claimed that the idea of using a meta tag to pick a specific rendering mode fundamentally misses the point of standards-based development but positioned the issue as one of idealism
Idealism
In philosophy, idealism is the family of views which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing...
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition centered on the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice...
in web development, noting that not all of the Web is maintained, and that "demanding that web developers update sites to ensure they continue to work properly in any future browser version is probably too much to ask."
The result for IE 8 Beta 1 was that it could render three modes: "Quirks," "Strict," and "Standard." When there is an old DOCTYPE or when there is no DOCTYPE, IE renders it like IE5 would (quirks mode). When a special meta element
Meta element
Meta elements are the HTML or XHTML <meta … > element used to provide structured metadata about a Web page. Multiple elements are often used on the same page: the element is the same, but its attributes are different...
or its corresponding HTTP header is included in a web page, IE8 will render that page like IE7 would (strict mode). Otherwise, IE8 renders pages with its own engine (standard mode). Users can switch between the three modes with a few clicks. The release of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 revealed that many web sites do not work in this new standards mode.
Microsoft maintains a list of websites that have been reported to have problems in IE8's standards mode, known as the compatibility view list. When a user enables this list IE8 will render the websites in the list using its compatibility view mode. The list is occasionally updated to add newly reported problematic websites, as well as to remove websites whose owners have requested removal. The Internet Explorer team also tests the websites on the list for compatibility issues and removes those where none are found.
Windows Internet Explorer 9 is the current version of the Internet Explorer web browser from Microsoft. It was released to the public on March 14, 2011 at 21:00 PDT. Internet Explorer 9 supports several CSS 3 properties, embedded ICC v2 or v4 color profiles support via Windows Color System, and...
Windows Internet Explorer 10 is the next version of Internet Explorer currently being developed by Microsoft, and the successor to Internet Explorer 9. On April 12, 2011, Microsoft released the first "IE10 Platform Preview", which only runs on Windows 7; later platform previews only run on Windows 8...
also offer a compatibility mode.
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