About a month ago I posted a blog about Internet Explorer 8 (which recently passed the Acid 2 web standards test) requiring a special tag to utilize its new web standards rendering method.

In essence, this meant that sites and developers who had been using web standardized code would have to “turn on” standards in IE8 with a specific html META tag. Otherwise IE8 would render exactly like IE7. While this might have helped a few sites maintain backward compatibility, clearly it was not the way to force web developers and users to respect standards and adhere to them.

Case in point: IE’s development team agrees. Internet Explorer 8 will now automatically render sites in “standards mode” without needing to be told to do so. Sites that I built years ago with web standards in mind will finally fully work in Internet Explorer for the first time, this is great news!

I really want to extend my gratitude to Microsoft’s IE team for thinking through this one and listening to the community. It goes to show that things really have taken a change for the better regarding IE. And to be honest, I’m extremely happy that I can give Microsoft a pat on the back for a really trying to do what’s best for their developers and their users.

Good stuff.