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Go back to your websites and prepare for IE8

The week began with Microsoft stocking up on canned food and shotguns, with one wary eye on the heavens as the shadow of Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 fell. It was, as it turned out, one of those comedy apocalypses brought on by Microsoft itself, which has finally discovered just how much of a pain it is to have a standards-based browser, after years of encouraging non-standard pages.

"It's all very commendable Microsoft finally adopting standards but as long as it has a 'pretend to be an old, broken version' [IE7 emulate] feature, it means site owners/coders with the 'everyone uses Windows/IE' mentality will still continue to use broken code knowing full well that, at the click of a button (by the user), it will render okay in Internet Explorer 8," laments parishmco.

Swissmac agreed... kind of: "Well, I have to give some credit to Microsoft here - finally it is beginning to get the message. Maybe with only one ear so far, but any move away from bully-boy tactics to full standards compliance is to be welcomed, but then they go and spoil it all... [with the] 'get out of jail free' card the emulate IE7 button will give web developers."

Shark, however, had clearly already gorged on his chunk of flesh that day, and was feeling sated and benevolent: "Sure, if Microsoft had removed the 'emulate IE7' feature then it would have provided a hefty and very useful stick as well as a carrot for those recalcitrant web developers to get their coding house in order, but the cost (to everyone with old-school, uneditable web pages) would be too high, and I think that its solution, whilst not being the ideal route to getting everybody coding to web standards, is a good, pragmatic approach for the real world."

Toshiba to resume format wars?

The tattle mill was in full flow this week, stoking the fires of the long-gone format war, by whispering rumours in Sony's ear that Toshiba had been saying rude things about its mum and would be waiting behind the bike sheds if it thought it was hard enough. This is what

"Returning to the format war in six months time will be a waste of time, and money," says Matt_2k34, gently humming the theme of WAR, what is it good for? "They should stop complaining, count their losses and move over to Blu-ray, like everyone else."

caladan couldn't hear that above the loud thump of his boot hitting the man on the ground: "Oh dear, Toshiba's trying to flog a dead horse. Face it guys, YOU LOST! Turn your attention to something else please!"

Surely, somebody will stand up for Toshiba, which, after all, hasn't actually done anything yet.

"I say Kudos to Toshiba," says puma25uk, always one for the underdog. "It's been a while since it was muscled out of the market, perhaps by less than ethical methods, and ... without a competitor, Sony stepped back and things are going back at usual snail-like pace."

Mozilla wants Google and Microsoft to team up on offline apps

And finally to Mozilla, which bless its cotton socks wants Microsoft and Google to team up on online apps, Punch to live happily with Judy, and Liverpool and Manchester United to give up all this hostile football nonsense and try holding either end of a jump rope for Arsenal instead. Hands up anybody who thinks it will happen?

"It's a nice idea Mozilla but I really don't believe you'll get Microsoft wanting to work with Google on anything and vice-versa. Pity though it does make sense. But they could also think of making a live version of Open Office - that might well develop a lot faster than any project that Google and Microsoft work on," says nicomo.

pcernie also had his reservations: "Mozilla should have been dealing with the memory leaks no matter what. Stay away from Microsoft, Google - you don't know where its been!"

"I do like Firefox, but the memory leaks have been a real bug-bear," notes Big_D. "Especially when developing, where you are loading thousands of site images a day and running through hundreds of tabs. It shows that Mozilla comes from a background where new features are more important than getting something right ("hey, it works, sort of, let's get the next big thing implemented.")"

Sounds good, see you all next week.