IE8 ready to name and shame non-compliant websites

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 5 Dec 2008 at 08:36

Microsoft is drawing up a list of websites that aren't compatible with Internet Explorer 8, after early trials found people were struggling to access their favourite sites with the new browser.

Internet Explorer 8 promises to be fully standards compliant. Ironically, this means that many websites designed to accommodate IE's previous rendering foibles are being scrambled when viewed on the new browser.

To combat this problem, Microsoft pleaded with "hundreds of websites" to get their houses in order before the official rollout of Internet Explorer 8. It has also introduced a "compatibility view" mode, which lets users view sites in the old standards-skewed mode.

"Despite all the outreach to sites, we saw from the telemetry data that IE8 Beta 2 users still have to use Compatibility View a lot," writes IE8 program manager Scott Dickens on his blog.

"Looking at our instrumentation, there were high-volume sites like facebook.com, myspace.com, bbc.co.uk, and cnn.com with pages that weren't working for end-users with IE's new standards compliant default. We could also see from our instrumentation that not all IE8 visitors to those sites were clicking the Compatibility View button. So, large groups of people were having a less than great experience because they weren't aware of the manual steps required to make certain sites work."

Microsoft's attempt to address this problem will see it compile a list of websites that need to be viewed in compatibility mode based on user feedback. Customers installing Windows 7 beta or the next IE8 update will be asked if they wish to opt-in to this list and contribute feedback.

The company also says it will be "reaching out" to websites that require compatibility mode in an effort to demonstrate just how hideous their websites are when viewed on IE8. The company will then explain what actions the site must take to get off the list of shame, though they can also ask to have their site removed if they wish.

Read our review of Internet Explorer 8 beta 2

Opera has also been making a big play of its standards compliance, and has recently released the alpha of Opera 10, the first browser to score 100 out of 100 on the Acid3 test.