[development] What does IE8 mean for Drupal?

[Victor Kane]

Well, this is a great list of materials. Lots of food for thought.

Just, concerning your point "...don't be suckered by Eric Meyer and
Jeffrey Zeldman's
support for the idea - get educated..."; I think that the need to
debate what Eric Meyer, certainly someone on the forefront of CSS
standards use, has to say on the subject is hardly getting suckered
into something.

It is a very significant move by Microsoft, which may amount to
nothing, may amount to something, may be adopted by other browsers,
may not (they all may find positive uses for it, at least it might be
a switch to level the playing field) but the points being raised are
central to the future of webdesign.

While profit margins make the decisions in the context of the world
war between Microsoft - HP - IBM - Sun (a proud Drupal sponsor), there
is no hope for rational standards, really. Which would include your
Jeremy Keith position, which I would agree with. The question,
however, will be how to get around what the corporations actually put
out.

And, 75% still use IE, so...

Again, whatever is adopted, all that Drupal needs to do is make the
switch accessible via admin interface (I would be strongly against
leaving this to a theme level, since it is a royal PITA to have to
redo settings while changing themes).

saludos,

Victor Kane
http://awebfactory.com.ar

On Jan 24, 2008 10:07 AM, Adrian Simmons <adrinux at perlucida.com> wrote:
>
> Rowan Wigginton wrote:
> > Do you think the changes announced [1] by Microsoft could have a
> > significant impact on Drupal's (or any CMS's) progress?
> >
> > [1] http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/01/21/compatibility-and-ie8.aspx
> >
> IE8 isn't even out yet and given the controversy[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]
> surrounding this suggested meta/version-targeting feature it may yet change,
> so lets not worry too much about this right now. It could be applied at the
> theme level or even the server level (outwith Drupal) when the time comes,
> *if* the time comes.
>
>
> In the meantime, don't be suckered by Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman's
> support for the idea - get educated. Here are some links to read around this
> idea:
>
> [1] Drew McLellan points out that - despite what's said on the IEBlog - the
> Web Standards project is not 100% behind the idea, several members were only
> aware of the proposal after the publication on ALA and seem quite miffed:
> http://www.webstandards.org/2008/01/22/microsofts-version-targeting-proposal/
>
> [2] Andy Budd on why this would be a bad thing for microsoft in the long run:
> http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2008/01/has_internet_ex/
>
> [3] John Ressig (of jQuery) on why it would be bad for javascript:
> http://ejohn.org/blog/meta-madness/
>
> [4] Ian Hixie has a bit of a rant too:
> http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1201080691&count=1
>
> [5] Robert O'Callahan on why we'll never see this in Firefox:
> http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2008/01/post_2.html
> http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2008/01/slipping_the_ba.html
>
> [6] Maciej Stachowiak on why we'll never see this in Webkit (Safari)
> http://webkit.org/blog/155/versioning-compatibility-and-standards/
>
> [7] Anne van Kesteren (works for Opera) also thinks it's a bad idea:
> http://annevankesteren.nl/2008/01/ie-lock-in
>
> [8] James Bennett has a good follow up to his "Fire and Motion" post of why
> Microsoft is having to do this:
> http://www.b-list.org/weblog/2008/jan/23/legacy/
>
> [9] Jeremy Keith on why the execution is flawed, and how it can be fixed:
> "I think that the X-UA-Compatible header is a great idea. It's great for
> Microsoft. It's great for Microsoft's customers. But the default behaviour
> is wrong, wrong, wrong! This should be an innovative feature, not a
> mandatory part of the process of creating a document on the World Wide Web."
> http://adactio.com/journal/1402/
>
> IMNSHO Jeremy Keith has the right answer, it's a good idea badly implemented.
>
> --
> Adrian Simmons (aka adrinux) <http://perlucida.com>
> e-mail <mailto:adrinux at perlucida.com>
>