Could IE8 incompatibilities be a boon for Firefox?

June 12, 2008 (Thursday) | IE 8

Mary Jo Foley notes that the more standards-compliant Internet Explorer 8 may cause some problems for website owners. Why? Well, many have tailored their websites to non-standards compliant IE7 (as well as prior versions), and may find that opening the doors to IE8 may not be painless. As Microsoft noted on its IE blog: What does "getting ready for IE8" mean for web sites? IE8 displays content in IE8 Standards mode - its most standards-compliant layout mode - by default. In previous blog posts, we've discussed how this aligns with our commitment to Web standards interoperability. However, browsing with this default setting may cause content written for previous versions of IE to display differently than intended. This creates a "get ready" call to action for site owners to ensure their content will continue to display seamlessly in IE8. It also creates a "get ready" call to rival browsers, and particularly Mozilla's Firefox, to capitalize on Microsoft's incompatibility with itself to remind website creators that web standards are just that: Standards that should lead to greater cross-platform/browser compatibility. As more websites code for IE8, it should lead to those same sites working better with Firefox, Safari, and other browsers. ...